Effect of Extravasated Antibody upon Antigenicity of Extracts of Virus-Induced Rabbit Papillomas

Abstract

Saline suspensions of virus-induced rabbit papillomas may stimulate the production of specific antiviral antibody when injected in-traperitoneally into normal rabbits, as Shope found, even though they contain no pathogenic virus demonstrable by the ordinary test.1 In experiments of the same sort we found that saline extracts containing infectious papilloma virus in quantity elicited the antibody in much higher titer than extracts in which little or none was present.2 Other studies already reported from this laboratory have shown that the antibody often extravasates into the large, disorderly papillomas of cottontail rabbits in such quantity as to “mask” the causative virus,3 and that the antibody can be identified as such in extracts of the growths.4 With these findings in mind, experiments were undertaken to determine whether the antibody, which accumulates in the papillomas in various amounts depending upon the titer of it in the blood and upon the local vascular conditions determining its extravasation...