Reticuloendothelial Immune Serum (REIS)

The importance of the reticuloendothelial system in relation to neoplasms has been recently brought into focus by a group of Soviet workers. According to Shimkin (18), blockading of the reticuloendothelial system has been used by Roskin (16) as a means of growing heteroplastic tumors. Bogomolets (3) has reported the effect of specific antireticular cytotoxic serum (ACS) on the genesis, survival, and metastasis of cancer. Anti-human spleen horse serum" has been shown (9) to increase the carcinolytic capacity of the serum of cancer patients. According to Bogomolets (4) "Whereas the macrophages penetrating the tumor tissue destroy the carcinogenetic cellular element, the fibroblasts and microphages form a strong line of demarcation around the cancerous foci." It is believed that this activity, along with the production of trephone-like substances by macrophages, assists in the resistance against cancerous proliferations. Bogomolets and Neuman found that at very low concentrations anticytotoxic serum was capable of reducing the number of positive inoculations of tumor grafts; the reverse was true with high concentrations. Bogomolets (4) states that, " . . . . Dr. Neuman showed that stimulation of the connective tissue with anti-reticular cytotoxic serum in many cases leads to complete disappearance of large carcinogenous tumors in mice and decreases the number of metastases of the cancer to the lungs." Disappearance of pain, and of metastases in lymph nodes are given as evidence of the value of such sera in inoperable human cancer. Research in our laboratories has corroborated the statement by Soviet workers that reticuloendothelial immune serum (REIS) prepared according to the method described by Marchuk (11) has both damaging properties and stimulating action. Thus homologous sera, when incorporated in the culture medium at high concentration, have been shown to restrict the outgrowth of splenic fragments and cause cell clumping (14), as well as total inhibition of heart fragments (15). Moreover, this effect was demonstrated in vivo by the experimental production of bartonellosis in latent carriers (1, 2). Preliminary experiments suggest that low concentrations of homologous sera stimulate the migration of cells from chick heart explants (13). These effects appear to be species specific, since they could not be produced by antisera made from antigen derived from a different species of animal.