Lorillard
Sloan Kettering Institute for Cancer Research Progress Report Xv Viruses and Cancer 630100
Fields
- Author
- Horsfall, F.L., J.R.
- Howard, F.A.
- Alias
- 01134381/01134442
- Area
- SCHULTZ/BASEMENT GMP (VPRD)
- Type
- PAMP, PAMPHLET
- Recipient
- Parmele <Parmele, H.B.>
- Named Organization
- Ski, Sloan-Kettering Inst
- Date Loaded
- 28 Apr 1999
- Document File
- 01134241/01134506/Memorial Center
- Copied
- Parmele <Parmele, H.B.>
- Litigation
- Okag/Produced
- Author (Organization)
- Cornell Univ
- Ski, Sloan-Kettering Inst
- Characteristic
- MARG, MARGINALIA
- MINI, MINIMUM CODING
- Site
- G60
- UCSF Legacy ID
- kme00e00
Document Images
"'D ~ .,1:
FRANK A. HOWARD
Chairman
Research Consultant,
Standard Oil Company (N.J.)
EUGENE W. KETTERING
Vice Chairman
President,
Charles F. Kettering Foundation
FRANK L. HORSFALL, JR., M.D.
President, Sloan-Kettering
Institute for Cancer Research
EDWARD C. DELAFIELD
Secretary
Senior Partner,
Delafield & Delafield
ELLMORE C. PATTERSON
Treasurer
Senior Vice President,
Morgan Guaranty Trust Co.
of New York
ROGER ADAMS, Ph.D.
Research Pro f essor, Department o f
Chemistry and Chemical Engineering
MARION W. BOYER
Vice President and Director,
Standard Oil Company (N.J.)
DETLEV W. BRONK, Ph.D.
President,
The Rockefeller Institute
REGINALD G. COOMBE
Consultant to
Laurance S. Rockefeller,
Rockefeller Brothers Fund
JOSEPH C. HINSEY, Ph.D.
Director, The New York Hospital-
Cornell 117edical Center
B. BREWSTER JENNINGS
Chairman, Board of Managers,
1I7em orial Hospital f or
Cancer and Allied Diseases
DEANE W. MALOTT
President,
Cornell University
W. ALBERT NOYES, JR., Ph.D.
Chairman, Department of Chemistry
University of Rochester
LAURANCE S. ROCKEFELLER
Rockefeller Brothers, Inc.
ALFRED P. SLOAN, JR.
Honorary Chairman of the Board,
General Motors Corporation
ROBERT M. STECHER, M.D.
Director, Artluitis Clinic,
Cleveland Metropolitan
General Hospital
LEWIS L. STRAUSS
Former Secretary, United States
Department of Commerce
ROBERT E. STRAWBRIDGE, JR.
Director, Strawbridge & Clothier
WARREN WEAVER, Ph.D.
Vice President,
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
THEODORE P. WRIGHT, D.Sc.
Chairman of the Boards of Directors,
Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory and
Cornell Research Foundation
H. LAWRENCE HESS
Assistant Secretary
LEON W. ZUCKER
Assistant Treasurer
HARRISON V. SMITH
Assistant Trecisurer
01134384

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~ '-J' . ~ . . . ~w . ` . .. ._ . .. .. -
RO.11:I) OI ~: ;T I1~IC: CC)'\'M "l,"I'
PEYTON Rous, M.D.
Chairman
Member Emeritus,
The Rockefeller Institute
RICHARD T. ARNOLD, Ph.D.
President,
Mead Johnson Research Center
WILLIAM F. BALE, Ph.D.
Professor, Radiation Biology
fltomic Energy Project
University of Rochester School of
Medicine and Dentistry
STANLEY E. BRADLEY, M.D.
Bard Professor and
Chairman, Department of 161edicine
Columbia University
College of Physicians and Surgeons
SEYMOUR S. COHEN, Ph.D.
Professor of Biochemistry,
University of Pennsylvania
School of Medicine
WARREN H. COLE, M.D.
Professor and I-lead,
Department of Surgery
University of Illinois
College of Illedicine
JOHN E. DEITRICK, M.D.
Dean, Cornell University
Medical College
HARRY EAGLE, M.D.
Professor and Chairman,
Department of Cell Biology
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Yeshiva Universit y
IRVING M. LONDON, M.D.
Professor and Chairman,
Department of Medicine
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Yeshiva University
RICHARD E. SHOPE, M.D.
Professor and 1lleTnber,
The Rockefeller Institute
HOWARD E. SKIPPER, Ph.D.
Assistant Director,
Southern Research Institute
CHANDLER A. STETSON, JR., M.D.
Professor and Chairman.
Department of Pathology
New York University
School of Medicine
L' DWARD L. TATUAI, Ph.D.
Professor and Member,
The Rockefeller Institute
J. WALTER WILSON, Ph.D.
Frank L. Day Professor of Biology,
Brown University
~
01134385

FRAN K L. HORSFALL, JR., M.D.
President and Director
LEO WADE, M.D. HENRY T. RANDALL, M.D.
Pice President f or Vice President f or
Jdministration Clinical Affairs
FREDERIC W. NORDSIEK, Ph.D.
Chief of Grants and
Fellowships
BERNARD J. PALL\IBO
Fiscal O fficer
HENRY E. NIELENEY, JR.
.4dntiuistrator
VINCENT N. UMLAND
fl dministrator
Walker Laboratory
C. CHESTER STOCK, Ph.D.
Vice President for Research
Director, Walker Laboratory
BERNHARD L. MECKE
Vice President f or
Business tlffairs
JAIIES B. KETCHAM
Personnel O f}~ecer
ROBERT A. FLECK
Jssistant Personnel
O f}'icer
H. PEYTON MORRIS. JR.
Personnel OJficer
Walker Laboratory
01134386

6
Since the Sloan-Kettering Institute was founded in i q¢s, it has
had one goal--more effective control of cancer in man through cure
and eventual prevention. To accomplish this objective, the current
research program at the Institute encompasses seven major fields of
investigation-chemotherapy, clinical investigation, immunity and
virology, chemistry, biophysics, preventive medicine, and pathology.
This report is a review of the history of, as well as the work now in
progress on, the role viruses may play in cancer.
The studies in this area, to some degree, involve many fields of
investigation at the Institute. Knowledge is being gathered that is
not only vital for potential application in the control of cancer and
other related diseases, but which also, may be of great importance
in understanding more fully the differences between the living and
the non-living-questions man has pondered for centuries.
The relation of the findings in this area to those that are already
known to play a role in the origin of cancer requires intensive study.
It is possible that further progress in viral investigations could en-
hance the beneficial effects of chemotherapy and radiation therapy
as well as lead to the development of useful procedures for pre-
vention.
To meet the increasing demands upon its research program, re-
lieve the serious overcrowding of its present laboratory facilities and
to consolidate related activities, construction of the new research
laboratory building on East 68th Street is already underway. This
t z-story structure is expected to be in full operation early in i q64.
It will provide an additional 8~,ooo square feet of urgently needed
laboratory space to meet the requirements of the Institute's broadened
research program. The new laboratory building will be directly con-
nected with Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the New
York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center through tunnels under the
streets.
01134387

7
Two new members have been appointed to the Board of Scientific
Consultants. They are Dr. Stanley E. Bradley, Chairman, Depart-
ment of Medicine, Columbia University College of Physicians and
Surgeons, and Dr. Harry Eagle, Professor and Chairman, Depart-
ment of Cell Biology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Mr. Marion W. Boyer, a vice president and director of Standard
Oil Company (New Jersey), was named to the Board of Trustees
to fill the vacancy left by the resignation of IDr. Albert Bradley.
The Sloan-Kettering Institute's budget for the current year
(1962) totals more than $9 million. Among the major sources of
support are the National Cancer Institute of the United States Public
Health Service, the American Cancer Society, the United States
Atomic Energy Commission and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Other sources of major support include the Commonwealth Fund,
the Max C. Fleischmann Foundation of Nevada, the Lillia Babbitt
Hyde Foundation, the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, the Charles
E. Merrill Trust, the Damon Runyon Memorial Fund for Cancer
Research, the Andre and Bella Meyer Foundation, the Elsa U.
Pardee Foundation, the Fannie E. Rippel Foundation and the
Stranahan Foundation.
In addition, a large amount of essential support comes from more
than two thousand interested individuals and corporations whose
contributions range from one dollar to much larger sums. Many of
these gifts are presented in memory of friends and loved ones in the
hope that others will be spared through the fruits of continuing
research.
01134388

Just ioo years ago 7.ouis Pasteur delivered at the Sorbonne
his famous lecture on spontaneous generation and so, in the eyes of
many medical historians, modern biology came into being, with
modern medicine following close behind.
Since earliest days, man had paused to ponder from time to time
the nature of the difference between the living and the non-living.
Aristotle believed simple living things, such as worms, beetles, lice,
frogs and salamanders, could originate spontaneously in slime or mud
or the morning dew. "Nature proceeds little by little from things
lifeless to animal life in such a way that it is impossible to determine
the exact line of demarcation nor on which side thereof an inter-
mediate form should lie," he concluded, and for centuries thereafter
spontaneous generation was considered a normal mode of production
of a large number of living things. Paracelsus, van Helmont and
other famous physicians reported personal observations on the genesis
of frogs and mice and other living creatures from inert raw materials.
Such findings failed to surprise a public that was well accustomed
to the notion that rodents came from grain, snakes from a woman's
hair dropped in rainwater, and plant lice from a dewdrop.
Francesco Redi of Tuscany was the first to challenge spontaneous
generation by experimental methods. Maggots, he showed, are not
01134389)

9
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formed in decaying meat unless flies have access to the meat and
lay their eggs in it. Opposition to Redi soon gained support from
an unexpected quarter, however-the early microscopists. Perhaps
eels do not come from ooze nor worms from putrefaction, but it is
only necessary to put decomposing substances for a short time in a
warm place and tiny "live beasts" appear under the lens before one's
very eyes, they pointed out. The French biologist Buffon, in the first
half of the eighteenth century, formulated a compromise theory:
all living material, he proposed, consists of organic molecules that
do not change. When a dead organism decomposes, the material of
which it is formed recombines, creating new living organisms.
The Abbe Spallanzani rejoined with a vitriolic attack on Buffon
and his followers. Spallanzani devised careful and elaborate experi-
ments to demonstrate that no living "animalcula" ever appeared in
a concoction in which they had first been killed by boiling and which
were sealed to prevent further entry of microorganisms. These ex-
perimental proofs did not win over his determined opponents; ex-
cessive heating destroyed the life forces, they argued, and drove
from the flasks.the oxygen needed for the formation of life. Further,
every gain made by Spallanzani and his followers was at least par-
tially offset by experimental defects. In 18 6o, the situation was such
that the French Academy of Sciences offered a prize for convincing
experiments, one way or the other, on the question of spontaneous
generation. Pasteur won this prize for his extremely simple and in-
finitely reproducible experiments with the familiar swan-necked
flasks. By heating a flask to sterilize its contents and drawing out the
neck of the flask to an elongated S, Pasteur was able to show that life
developed in any liquid medium only if the medium became infected
from the air. The contents of the flasks remained sterile indefinitely
until the necks of the flasks were broken, permitting minute organ-
isms from the air to settle upon the surface of the medium.
Pasteur's experiments came at a time when botanists were mar-
velling over the bacteria their microscopes revealed, while physicians,
frustrated at the bedsides of their patients, were arguing the nature
of contagion. One blaze of new light and the ancient fallacies-the
turtle-breeding mud, the miasmas, humours and demons-that had
ordered the course of medicine for so many centuries were never seen

10
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again. Pasteur himself predicted that his studies on spontaneous
generation and the origin of microbes "would prepare the road for a
serious investigation of the origin of various diseases." In truth, they
opened wide the avenues to modern medicine, preventive medicine,
public health, surgery and chemotherapy.
But now science has found itself again at a philosophical cross-
roads at which it must pause to ponder the nature of what is meant
by "living." This could be only an academic exercise, or, as it was a
hundred years ago, perhaps it might be the threshold of a new era
of medical advance. The following report on viruses and cancer
deals with one aspect of this problem.
01134391

,. r
--Yf~~ology~as; from the very beginning, the unwanted child of
the bacteriologists. Pasteur postulated the existence of submicroscopic
organisms as the cause of rabies but did not stop to demonstrate their
existence, and John Buist, who even could see tiny specks in specially
prepared specimens from cowpox vesicles (cowpox is one of the
largest of the viruses and just on the borderline of visibility with the
light microscope), could not grow them by any of the bacteriological
techniques and so abandoned the investigation. By and large, how-
ever, bacteriology in those early days was so replete with successes
that it could well afford to overlook its failures.
The crucial experiment was performed in 1897 by a Dutch
botanist, Martinus Beijerinck. Beijerinck, a specialist in plant dis-
eases, was seeking the cause of tobacco mosaic disease, a common
condition that mottles the tobacco leaves and may dwarf the plants.
Tobacco mosaic was known to be infectious-juices from an infected
leaf would cause the disease in a healthy leaf-but previous sporadic
attempts to find the causative organism, including two by Bei j erinck
himself, had failed. Beijerinck forced the juice through a fine filter;
01134392

12
C7 .~~-lS;;?l;Tc -07
this was a fairly common procedure by which bacteriologists proved
that the infectivity was due to bacteria rather than the fluid that sur-
rounded them. This time, however, it was the filtered fluid that in-
duced the disease. Furthermore, the juice of the filtrate-infected leaf,
in which disease had been caused by the filtrate, could itself yield a
filtrate that would induce disease in another healthy plant, ad infini-
tum. The filtrate was not merely a toxin or a poison but seemed to
have a continuing life of its own. Since Beijerinck could see nothing
in the fluid, search as he would, and could cultivate nothing from
the fluid, he concluded that it was the fluid itself that produced the
infection. Contagium vivum fluidum he called it, and throughout
his report he referred to it as a virus, the first use of this now well-
known word in this exact context.
Beijerinck wrote in 1913, "The existence of these contagia
proves that the concept of life-if one considers metabolism and
proliferation as its essential characters-is not inseparably linked up
with that of structure; the criteria of life . . . are also compatible
with the fluid state . . . In its most primitive form life is, therefore,
no longer bound to the cell,... In its primitive form life is like fire,
like a flame borne by the living substance-like a flame which appears
in endless diversity and yet has specificity within it . . . which does
not originate by spontaneous generation but is propagated by another
flame."
Within a year, a disease of animals, foot-and-mouth disease of
cattle, was similarly proved to be caused by what became known as
filterable viruses (still meaning disease-causing poisons that pass
through a filter that holds back bacteria) and in i qo i it was shown
that a disease of man, yellow fever, was attributable to a virus.
During the thirty years after Beijerinck's discovery, many new
viruses were found but little more was learned of the nature of viruses.
They were invisible poisons which would induce characteristic dis-
eases in a susceptible host and which, as Beijerinck had pointed out,
were capable of some form of reproduction. Animals which had been
infected with a virus produced equally invisible substances in their
blood which could neutralize the virus on future encounters. Ex-
posure of an unknown virus to the blood of an animal that had re-
01134393
