Curing cancer? Patrick Lee's path to the reovirus treatment

This article provides a historical, philosophical, and psychological analysis of the recent discovery that reoviruses are oncolytic, capable of infecting and destroying many kinds of cancer cells. After describing Patrick Lee's very indirect path to this discovery, I discuss the implications of this case for understanding the nature of scientific discovery, including the economy of research, anomaly recognition, hypothesis formation, and the role of emotion in scientific thinking. Lee's discoveries involved a combination of serendipity, abductive and deductive inference, and emotional cognition.

[1]  M. Coffey,et al.  The molecular basis of viral oncolysis: usurpation of the Ras signaling pathway by reovirus , 1998, The EMBO journal.

[2]  P. Andel.  Anatomy of the Unsought Finding. Serendipity: Orgin, History, Domains, Traditions, Appearances, Patterns and Programmability , 1994, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

[3]  J. Strong,et al.  The v-erbB oncogene confers enhanced cellular susceptibility to reovirus infection , 1996, Journal of virology.

[4]  A. Rueger,et al.  The epistemic significance of appreciating experiments aesthetically , 2000 .

[5]  J. Strong,et al.  Evidence that the epidermal growth factor receptor on host cells confers reovirus infection efficiency. , 1993, Virology.

[6]  P. Thagard,et al.  Coherence in Thought and Action , 2000 .

[7]  R. Buckman.  Dr. Folkman's War: Angiogenesis and the Struggle to Defeat Cancer , 2001, Nature Medicine.

[8]  P. Thagard,et al.  How Scientists Explain Disease , 1999 .

[9]  P. Thagard,et al.  Computational Philosophy of Science , 1988 .

[10]  J. Olson.  The History of Cancer: An Annotated Bibliography , 1989 .

[11]  Kevin Dunbar,et al.  What Scientific Thinking Reveals About the Nature of Cognition , 2000 .

[12]  A. Fattaey,et al.  An Adenovirus Mutant That Replicates Selectively in p53- Deficient Human Tumor Cells , 1996, Science.

[13]  M. Coffey,et al.  Reovirus therapy of tumors with activated Ras pathway. , 1998, Science.

[14]  J. Strong,et al.  Recognition of the epidermal growth factor receptor by reovirus. , 1993, Virology.