CANCER RESEARCH WORK.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 285, 5 November 1925, Page 6

CANCER RESEARCH WORK.

CURE FOR SARCOMA IN RATS. IMPORTANT ENPERIMENTS. LONDON, Sept. 17. Dr. Thomas Lumsden, who has been carrying out experiments with regard to cancer at the Lister fnstitute of preventive Medicine at Chelsea, records his progress in an article in tho Lancet. Ho gives results which appear to show that a cure for one form of cancer (sarcoma) implanted in rats has been found. Among o 0 rats inoculated with what is called Jensen’s Rat Sarcoma, 11 (S2 per cent.) were cured. Of another dO “control” animals, which were either not treated at all or were treated without the serum, there were only eight recoveries; in the remaining 42 (84 per cent.) the cancer tumours continued to grow. Not only is it claimed that the serum has cured cancer growths, but that it has conferred ini in inity, so that, after being cured, animals could not be infected again, as they were at first, by implanting cancer cells m their bodies. The conclusions Dr. Lumsden draws in his article in the Lancet arc: —An appropriate anti-scrum kills cancer or sarcoma cells in vitro (glass vessels) rapidly and invariably. Pieces of cancer tissue kept in anti-serum for three to six days do not thereafter produce a progressive tumour when inoculated into the living animal —a proof that the. cancer cells have been destroyed, Jen sen’s Rat Sarcoma implanted in the foot of the rat can lie caused to disappear by repdated injections of the anti-scrum, coupled with temporary stoppage of tho circulation in the part. After the tumour is thus cured the rat becomes so resistant to tho disease that if cancer is now inoculated into the other foot it does not develop.