Abstract
It has been reported 1 that repeated injections of aqueous extracts prepared from fresh whole pituitary glands (sheep and cattle) or from fresh anterior lobes, had a slight but distinct stimulating effect upon the growth of the Passey mouse melanoma. With the Flexner-Jobling rat carcinoma, the Bash ford mouse carcinoma 63, and the Rous chicken sarcoma, no stimulating action was observed.
It was further shown in this institution that the aqueous extracts of the Passey mouse melanoma gave a distinct intermedin reaction on a small fish, called the Elritze (Phoxinus laevis)∗ On the other hand, aqueous extracts of the Flexner-Jobling rat carcinoma, the Sugiura rat sarcoma, the Heiman rat fibroadenoma 308, and the Rous chicken sarcoma gave either a negative or a very weak color reaction.
These experiments suggest that the melanoma-stimulating substance found in pituitary extracts and the intermedin-like substance present in melanoma tissue might be identical.
Since in preparing the extracts of the pituitary, both the anterior and middle lobes were used, there is a good reason to suppose that the hormone of the intermediary lobe of the hypophysis may possess much greater melanoma-stimulating action than that of the anterior pituitary. The following experiments were carried out with the object of testing this supposition.
Twenty young adult albino mice bearing 7-day-old Passey mouse melanoma were each injected subcutaneously with 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, or 0.3 cc. of intermedin† 3 times a week, over a period of 78 days, Each cubic centimeter contained from 2000 to 2500 fish units. The intermedin injections seemed to have no ill effect on the general health of these animals.
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