In this paper we study the interior transmission problem and transmission eigenvalues for multiplicative perturbations of linear partial differential operator of order 2 with constant real coefficients. Under suitable growth conditions on the symbol of the operator and the perturbation, we show the discreteness of the set of transmission eigenvalues and derive sufficient conditions on the existence of transmission eigenvalues. We apply these techniques to the case of the biharmonic operator and the Dirac system. In the hypoelliptic case we present a connection to scattering theory.