Abstract
SINCE 1938 I have been engaged in a general study of the distribution of zinc in normal and malignant tissues, and this work has been briefly reported from time to time1. In the early part of the work, polarographic analyses for zinc content were made on human tissues, and although some neoplasms were found to have a much higher zinc concentration (expressed as grams zinc/gram dry-weight of tissue) than the corresponding normal tissue, others showed only slight increases. Examples are : rectal carcinoma, 7·58 × 10-4 gm. zinc/gm., and normal rectal tissue surrounding the carcinoma, 0·82 × 10-4 gm. zinc/gm.; bronchial carcinoma, 1·02 × 10-4 gm. zinc/gm., and normal bronchial tissue surrounding the carcinoma, 0·71 × 10-4 gm. zinc/gm. Analyses of whole tissue are open to the objection, among others, that the cell population is not a uniform one. In order to investigate the observed differences more closely, the concentrations of zinc in various fractions of a given tissue were determined.
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