About the Authors

Rekha Badiger

Contributed equally to this work with: Rekha Badiger, Jane A. Mitchell

Affiliation Cardiothoracic Pharmacology, National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI), Imperial College, London, United Kingdom

Jane A. Mitchell

Contributed equally to this work with: Rekha Badiger, Jane A. Mitchell

j.a.mitchell@imperial.ac.uk

Affiliation Cardiothoracic Pharmacology, National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI), Imperial College, London, United Kingdom

Hime Gashaw

Affiliation Cardiothoracic Pharmacology, National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI), Imperial College, London, United Kingdom

Neil A. Galloway-Phillipps

Affiliation Cardiothoracic Pharmacology, National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI), Imperial College, London, United Kingdom

Stefan Foser

Affiliation Hoffmann-La Roche, Basel, Switzerland

Fernando Tatsch

Affiliation Hoffmann-La Roche, Basel, Switzerland

Thomas Singer

Affiliation Hoffmann-La Roche, Basel, Switzerland

Trevor T. Hansel

Affiliation Imperial Clinical Respiratory Research Unit (ICRRU), St. Mary's Hospital, London, United Kingdom

Tobias Manigold

Affiliations Hoffmann-La Roche, Basel, Switzerland, Department of Internal Medicine, University Hospital, Basel, Switzerland

Competing Interests

SF, FT, TS and TM are employees of Roche. JAM received funding from Roche. Human IFNα2a, IFNα2b, 40KDa-PEGIFNα2a, 12KDa-PEGIFNα2b and 40KDa-PEGIFNα2a isoforms (K31, K134 and K122 [5]) were provided by Hoffmann-La Roche (Basel, Switzerland), and support for third-party writing assistance for this manuscript was provided by Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. TH was a consultant for Roche in Non-Clinical Safety at the time of the study. TH has been Principal Investigator for respiratory clinical studies at Imperial College that have been sponsored by Novartis (2008), Merck (2009) and GlaxoSmithKline (2011); has received lecture fees from Novartis, Bayer-Schering, Merck, Hoffmann La Roche, GSK and Dainippon-Sumitomo and is involved in setting up a spin-off company with Imperial Innovations called Mucosal Diagnostics. TH has received support to attend the American Thoracic Society from Boehringer Ingelheim. All other authors have nothing to disclose. There are no further patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online in the guide for authors..

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: JAM RB TM. Performed the experiments: JAM RB HG NAGP TTH TM. Analyzed the data: JAM RB HG NAGP SF FT TS TTH TM. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: SF. Wrote the paper: JAM RB HG NAGP SF FT TS TTH TM. Provided the purified Isomers (including all purification and biological characterization): SF.