A Study of the Relationship of Internal Secretions to the Metabolism of Malignant Tumor Tissue

Abstract

It is well known that various glands of internal secretion are important factors in influencing growth and metabolism of the normal intact organism. During recent years, considerable attention (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) has been directed toward their possible influence upon growth of abnormal tissue structures such as tumors, while their possible influence upon tumor metabolism has been largely overlooked. This subject offers interesting possibilities, because transplanted tumors are essentially parasitic tissue having no function essential to the host, which might be stimulated. They are made up of a constant cell structure and they have a relatively constant and characteristic metabolism. It is the purpose of this communication to report the measurements of the metabolism of mouse tumors after administration of various hormones and after deprivation of certain glands of internal secretion. Aside from the primary aim of obtaining data relative to the effect of the hormones upon tumor metabolism, it was thought that this method might add information regarding the mechanism of hormone action, for it might be presumed that any particular effect was obtained directly through the blood stream rather than by nerve stimulation, since the transplanted tumor has virtually no nerve supply.1 Of course, if no effect were noted, converse conclusions could not be drawn.