TGFB1 and viral infectious disease: While the responses to TGF-β are closely regulated by environmental stimuli and the accompanying cytokine milieu, the extremely pleiotropic nature of this cytokine has led to the suggestion that TGF- β can “act as a light switch: i.e. if it’s on, it will turn it off; if it’s off, it will turn it on [34].” In our experiments, we observed that endogenous TGF-β acts more like an anti-inflammatory cytokine as treatment with neutralizing antibodies promoted induction of both type I and type III interferon responses to either virus infection or the synthetic dsRNA, poly IC.