As the writer of TIME'S Medicine section, Anastasia Toufexis often finds herself trying to elucidate medical matters that scientists themselves are hard-pressed to explain. Says she: "The stock response to a science journalist's question seems to be, 'If I knew that, I'd have one foot on the boat to Sweden' --to pick up a Nobel Prize." Unanswered questions were a large and tantalizing part of Toufexis' work on this week's cover story on interferon, a substance that researchers feel may be helpful both in the treatment of cancer and in understanding its mechanism. The story was edited by Senior Editor Leon Jaroff. Cancer research is one of the most delicate subjects a medical reporter handles, observes Toufexis: "You don't want to offer readers an unrealistic hope, but you do want to bring progress to light. Interferon is progress."

Toufexis began her science career as a pre-med major at Smith College, though she insists, "I never wanted to be a doctor. I just liked the basic science curriculum." A staff writer for a physicians' newspaper before joining TIME in 1978, she has been practicing medical journalism for ten years, despite what she describes as a nagging professional handicap: her first name. "My friends and contacts at hospitals and research facilities sometimes fail to return phone calls," she laments. "They don't want to talk to the Anesthesia Department."

Toufexis' struggle to pin down details of the interferon story was made smoother by Adrianne Jucius, whose academic background in biological sciences and experience in hospitals and in medical research have been put to constant use during her three years as TIME'S Medicine reporter-researcher. Jucius, who has worked on previous cover stories on recombinant DNA (April 18, 1977), the first test-tube baby (July 31, 1978) and the escalating costs of American health care (May 28, 1979), found this week's assignment one of the most poignant of her career. "Like many people," she says, "I have suffered with friends dying of cancer. Whether or not interferon proves to be significant in cancer therapy, you can't help being moved by the resources and enormous intelligence now going into the study of it. That God-given capacity to inquire and learn is our greatest source of hope."

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