A Transplantable Rabbit Carcinoma Originating in a Virus-Induced Papilloma and Containing the Virus in Masked or Altered Form

A squamous cell carcinoma derived from a virus-induced rabbit papilloma has been propagated in fourteen successive groups of animals. It grows rapidly now in most individuals to which it is transplanted, killing early and metastasizing frequently. The original cancer was the outcome of alterations in epidermal cells already rendered neoplastic by the virus, and the latter, or an agent nearly related to it, has persisted and increased in the malignant tissue, as a study of the blood of the first ten groups of cancerous animals has shown. An antibody capable of specifically neutralizing the virus in vitro appeared in the blood of every new host in which the tumor enlarged progressively, and reached a titer comparable with that obtaining in animals which had long carried large papillomas. The antibody was absent from normal rabbits and those in which the cancer failed to grow. The implications of these facts are considered.