In conclusion, supplementing tissue culture-medium with an IFN inhibitor to increase the growth of IFN-sensitive viruses in a cell-line of choice represents an approach, which is broadly applicable to research investigating the importance of the IFN response in controlling virus infections and has utility in a number of practical applications including vaccine and oncolytic virus production, virus diagnostics and techniques to isolate newly emerging viruses. The gene discussed is IFNA1; the disease is viral infectious disease.