CANCER SERUM TESTS

Northern Advocate, 28 September 1926, Page 3

CANCER SERUM TESTS

• ANIMALS MADE, IMMUNE. * . , (By Science Service.) Cancer serum that has cured cancer in a, number of laboratory rates, and has rendered them immune to the disease over a long period of time, is the. latest cancer news just reported by Dr. Thomas Lumsdqn, working at the Lister Institute, under a grant from the British Empire Cancer Campaign. Dr. Lumsden has been working for several years on the possibility of serum treatment. . . In recent experiments he has fought cancer cells with a. number of different anti-sera in an attempt to find out which would be the most effective against the malignant cells, and also in the hope of learning the mechanism by which immunity to cancer is acquire ed. Fifty rats, all of them with a cancer in each hind foot, were used in one series of tests. Anti-serum of a rat or mouse cancer was injected in one' foot of each rat. - In every ease the. cancer of the treated foot was cured, and, in addition, tlje untreated tumour in the other foot also went away a few days later. Dr. Lumsden had previously reported that rats treated in this way “were found to be absolutely immune to the tumour concerned.’ ’ “It is now possible to state,” he says, “that this immunity is of long duration. A test inoculation was given to 50 rats six months after their recovery. Of these, only fwo developed progressive tumours. The other 48 were still completely resistant to a cancer, which grew rapidly in all of 12 normal animals inoculated with identical material at the same time.” Recent efforts to go further and use serum to fight human cancer are described in a report from Prof. Ferd. Blumenthal, of ’ the University of Berlin. Prof. Blumenthal long ago proposed that cancer patients might be injected with an extract of the tumour removed by operation, in order that they might become immunised. This method has lately been taken up with success of Dr. Thies, another German scientist, he reports. The chief drawback ( in this method is that a cancer used for this purpose must not be advanced in decomposition. This means, he says, that only a few operative cancers are adapted to this treatment. Cancer is caused not by any particular germ, but by the suffocation of colls, causing them to secrete an acid like that of sour milk, which stimulates abnormal growth. This, in brief (according to the Berlin correspondent of Science Service), is the theory advanced by Prof. O. Warburg, of Berlin, as a result of his researches into the physiology of the disease. All tissues of all living organisms produce acids as a result of their life processes, Prof. Warburg explains. In the healthy body these acids are combined with oxygen taken in with the breath, and are burned up to form carbon dioxide and water. But if for any reason a mass of cells fails to get its normal ration of oxygen the harmful fermentation acids arise and begin their mischief. Cancers are not able to get along entirely without oxygen, Prof. Warburg states, but they can stand suffocation and the presence of lactic acid better than normal -tissues can, which gives them a considerable advantage in the competition of growth.