TISSUE CULTURE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21600, 22 March 1932, Page 10

TISSUE CULTURE

REMARKABLE EXPERIMENTS BEARING ON CANCER RESEARCH (Special to Daily Times.) AUCKLAND, March 21. Experiments in tissue culture which are expected to have considerable significance in connection with cancer research, and in the long run may even reveal the secret of, perpetuating eternal life, are engaging the increasing attention of the medical world. Dr E. S. Homing, of the biological staff of the medical school of the University of Sydney, who is travelling the world as a Fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation, arrived by the Niagara from Vancouver on his way home to Sydney. He has made a special study of tissue culture technique in Sydney and particularly at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, one of the greatest laboratories for scientific research in the world. Dr Horning had favourable opportunities in Berlin of studying Ibe researches of Dr Albert Fischer, one of the world’s leading exponents of tissue culture, who has made rapid progress with the development of technique. Portions of the tissues of an animal or human body are removed by a surgical operation, washed, sterilised to free them of bacteria, and kept alive apart from the human body by feeding them in test tubes. Not only can they be kept alive, but they can be grown, the nucleus cells multiplying until the original portion of the tissue is hundreds of times its original size. Dr A. Carrel, who has been engaged in this research at the Rockefeller Institute in New York, has, for instance, succeeded in growing a small portion of the heart of a chicken for 20 years. “ The importance, of tissue culture," said Dr Horning, “ is that living tissues can be observed under a microscope while they are growing, and can bo subjected to various experiments. By this means we can fathom various problems connected with animal growth, and it is hoped that we shall thereby be helped to understand a great deal more about the growth of cancer. Provided the tissues are kept free from bacteria,, are regularly vashed and fed properly on culture media, say embryo juice or blood serum, they are immortal and will grow on for ever. What effect that will have on our knowledge of human life it is difficult to say. The obstacle to prolonging the life of the tissues ns they are found : n the body is that it appears impossible to free the body from bacteria as tissues can be freed from bacteria when surgically removed and preserved under test conditions.”

Dr Horning, who graduated at Oxford University and is now attached to the Washington University Medical School at St. Louis, said that the United States and Germany appeared to be leading the world to-day in the realm of medical research. America was more lavish than the majority of other countries in ; 'er expenditure on medical research, and the German institutions received valuable Government aid. It was rather wonderful, he added, how Germany, in a time of acute financial stringency, managed to maintain an extraordinary degree of efficiency in her scientific institutions.