THE CANCER PROBLEM.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20312, 21 January 1928, Page 14

THE CANCER PROBLEM.

AMERICAN RESEARCH. Another advance ha* been made toward the solution of the cancer problem. Dr Margaret R. Lewis, of the Department of Embryology of the Carnegie In stitution of Washington, and Dr Howard ,B. Andervont, of the Johns Hopkins Universitv, has just succeeded in establishing that the unidentified organism that causes the Rous chicken sarcoma can be rendered inactive by means of small quantities of aluminium and calcium salts. The significance of this, work lies in its possible application in the treatment of human cancer. An immense amounb of research will have to be done before any such result is likely to ensue, but these recently-learned facts point the way to a new direction for cancer research .n other laboratries. The chemicals that have been used in the treatment of cancer in the past have been highly toxic in character, with a strong tendency to injure other parts of the body as well as tha cancer cells. If it is found that calcium and aluminium compounds, either given by the mouth or injected into the blood stream, will have an adverse effect on cancer in chickens, it may lead to results of great benefit in treating human cancer because these compounds are more or less inert with little capacity to harm body tissues. “ While the primary tumor of this particular type of malignant chicken cancer differs in some respects from those fonud in human beings and higher animals, ’ explained Dr Lewis, “the secondary tumors or metasteses, as they are called, are similar to the malignant sarcom of man. The chicken tumor behaves quite as those of other kinds of animals in that it invades the tissue, develops metasteses, leads to the death of the animal, and can be transferred bv means of transplantation from one animal to another of the same species. _ thoim’’ r-t nf course, to an animal of a d’ -.i » species. “ The chicken tumor also resembles certain other diseases in that it is caused bv a still unidentified event that behaves like the so-called filterable viruses responsible for smallpox, rabies, and encephaltis in rabbits. Many years ago Dr Peyton Rous and Dr J. B. Murphy, of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, found that the causative agent of chicken tumor remained active in a filtrate. a glycerine extract, or in the dried material of the tumor itself. It waa also established by these workers that inoculation of these agents not only produced the disease, but if the animal recovered from the tumor it was more or less immune to further inoculation of the tumor virus.”