Parabiosis and Tumor Growth

Abstract

The subject of tumor immunity is of considerable importance, and any approach that promises to throw light upon this as yet unsolved problem should be thoroughly investigated. The effect of parabiosis upon tumor growth has been studied by various investigators, but their results and conclusions have been far from uniform. In an attempt to clear up this matter, the experiments here reported were undertaken. Sauerbruch and Heyde (1), in a series of experiments with parabiotic animals, noticed that the death of one animal was always followed by the death of the other in a few hours unless the live animal was cut away from its dead partner. This, they maintained, is probably due to the absorption of cadaver toxins from the dead animal. They also noticed that when iodine solution was injected into one animal, the urine of the other gave a positive iodine reaction within forty-five minutes. That corpuscular elements also could pass from the one to the other, they proved by injecting a culture of anthrax bacilli into the right animal and recovering the characteristic organisms from the heart9s blood of the left. From their anatomic studies, the authors conclude that the operative wound uniting the two animals heals exactly as does that in a single animal, except that the reaction is more intense, owing probably to “the foreign body” reaction. Friedberger and Nassetti (2) studying the antibody formation in parabiosis found that agglutinins formed as a result of the injection of typhoid bacilli or Vibrio elbensis into one animal could be recovered from the non-injected one. They also demonstrated that one animal could be immunized passively by the injection of these organisms into the other. Morpurgo (3), in a series of most interesting experiments, showed convincingly that after a bilateral nephrectomy was performed upon one rat, the kidneys of its partner in parabiosis were able to compensate for their loss and maintain life for both animals—in one instance for forty days. In another case, he succeeded in keeping two parabiotic rats alive for seventeen days after unilateral nephrectomy in one animal, the two kidneys of the other having been previously removed. Jehn (4) and Sauerbruch and Heyde obtained similar results in rabbits.