Carcinoma mammae occurring in a male mouse under continued treatment with oestrin.

Abstract

Many years ago Lathrop and Leo Loeb showed by experimental work that some connection exists in mice between ovarian activity and carcinoma of the mamma. This general conclusion was confirmed and amplified by further experiments carried out by Cori and by W. S. Murray. The discovery by Doisy, Veler, and Thayer, and by Butenandt, in 1929, of methods for preparing the ovarian hormone, oestrin, in a pure form opened the way to further and more exact inquiry into the problem of this association between ovarian activity and cancer of the breast. Lacassagne (1932, 1933) gave weekly injections of oestrin (folliculin) to 5 male mice belonging to a strain in which 72 per cent of the females are subject to spontaneous mammary cancer, the males not being subject to this development. Mammary cancer appeared in every one of the 5 males and in 5 of 7 females treated in this manner. Using mice belonging to strains in which mammary cancer occurred spontaneously in only 2 per cent of the females, and treating them in the same way as those of the preceding experiment, he found that mammary tumours developed in 2 of 8 males and in 1 of 7 females. These tumours appeared at a more advanced age than those produced in the strain which had a high natural incidence of cancer. In yet another strain of mice no neoplasia took place among 7 males treated by weekly injections of oestrin in the same manner as in the preceding experiments.