The Effect of Extracts of Different Organs and Tissues Upon the Viability of Transplantable Tumors

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It is a well established clinical fact that organs vary greatly in their susceptibilities to neoplastic growth. Laboratory studies have also indicated that different organs are not equally susceptible to tumor implantation and to the development of spontaneous tumors. Such differences in tumor development may well be accounted for by the presence in the normal tissues of tumorgrowth-inhibiting substances. The occurrence of such substances is indicated by observations recorded by Woglom (1), Sugiura and Benedict (2), de Gaetani and Blothner (3), Furth et al (4). The investigation here recorded has to do with the action of aqueous extracts of organs and tissues on the viability of tumor transplants. Materials and Methods The organs and tissues to be studied were removed from freshly killed, healthy, young adult albino rats in the morning before feeding. After the removal of all extraneous tissue and fat, the organ or tissue was washed with Locke-Ringer solution and dried on filter paper. The tissue was then weighed, ground thoroughly with sea-sand in a mortar, and taken up with ten times its own weight of Locke-Ringer solution at pH 7.4. After standing twenty-four hours at 7° C., the mixture was centrifuged at high speed (2,300 r.p.m.) for fifteen minutes. Two cubic centimeter portions of the supernatant fluid were put into small Jena glass weighing bottles having ground glass stoppers, and allowed to come to the temperature of the refrigerator, 4–5° C. Immediately small pieces of fresh tumor tissue (generally eleven pieces to each bottle), each weighing about 6 mg., were placed in these solutions and left for definite periods of time at 4–5° C., the bottle being shaken gently twice in twenty-four hours. The tumor fragments were then inoculated into animals by the usual trocar method, each animal usually receiving a single graft in the right or left axilla. Each set of experiments included as a control animals inoculated with untreated tumor tissue shortly after removal from the tumor-bearing animal. Aseptic precautions were taken throughout.