Chromosome studies on some human tumors and tissues of normal origin, grown in vivo and in vitro at the Sloan-Kettering Institute

RLMARKABLE feat in the study of hunianA neoplasms was achieved during the last five years, when Helene W. Toolan succeeded in working out methods for large-scale heterologous growth of human tissues and tumors in laboratory animals.15-16917By screcning more than one thousand tumors she found some twenty-five suitable for serial growth i n cortisone-treated rats, hamsters, and mice.T h e growth rate and increase i n volume in the new environment were very different i n these tumors.Some fifteen of them were discarded after ten generations as being too low in yield, one of the main purposes of these experiments being to obtain human tumors with high productivity.Among the ten remaining tumors, now carried in serial transfer at the Sloan-Kettering Institute, two were especially vigorous (H.S.-I and H.Ep.-3).They grow progressively, killing their hosts i n ten to fifteen days, during which time they increase up to one hundredfold in volume.These two tumors require less cortisone treatment of the hosts than the others.It is obvious that the study of the chromosomes in human neoplasms would profit inimensely by having tumors available in the laboratory as implants in animals, one of the obstacles to the chromosome study being the difficulty of obtaining fresh samples of one and the same tumor at any time and the impossibility of vital pretreatments 01 the From the Cancer Chromosome Laboratory, Institute of Genetics, Lund, Sweden.This study at the Sloan-Kettering Institute was made possible by a grant from the Swedish Cancer Society, for which I tender my