Using fuzzy logic in virus-mediated gene therapy

Abstract

The increasing complexity of scientific procedure has led to the use of linguistic expressions, based on subjective judgment, for assessing different aspects of the process, especially uncertainties. For instance, in gene therapy, there are uncertainties associated with errors that can be incurred during the actual insertion process of the gene, although these are seldom addressed in overall process performance. Furthermore, one often finds inadequacies in traditional methods used to quantify these uncertainties. Therefore, an approach has been developed that uses fuzzy set concepts to attain the goal of appraising the overall efficacy of a certain method of virus-mediated gene therapy. The analysis was done through the mathematical and graphical interpretation of linguistic terms for these appraisals. This method can be used to further reduce the possibility of errors in the generation of viral vectors for use in this field of research. © 2013 Springer-Verlag GmbH.