The effect of mammary tumors on the glucuronidase and esterase activities in a number of mouse strains.

The reports of Fishman and Anlyan (4) and of Odell and Burt (1@)indicating a high @9-glucuroni dase activity in a number of human cancerous tissues have elicited considerable interest in the possibility of a relationship between this enzyme and neoplasms in general. The lack of species specificity for such a relationship is indicated in the observation by Kerr et al. (9) of a higher glu curonidase concentration in mammary tumors than in the normal tissue of mice (of undesignated strains). Harris and Cohen (8) observed an inverse rela tionship between changes in @-glucuronidase and esterase activity levels for a number of tissues of mice subjected to variations in the amount of cm culating sex hormones. Similar inverse changes be tween these enzymes have also been reported (@) as occurring in the sera of patients with breast cancer on estrogen therapy. The investigations re ported in this paper were undertaken in part to determine whether a similar inverse relationship might occur in the mammary tumors of inbred mice. Such a possibility seemed supported by the report of Greenstein in 1944 that tumors of the liver, lymph node, and intestine in a number of strains of mice possessed a considerably lower estenase concentration than the corresponding normal tissue. A second aspect of the studies reported herein was to determine whether the glucuronidase and esterase activities in the mammary tissues varied for different strains of mice. A number of reports have appeared within the last decade on variations in enzyme patterns in a variety of inbred mouse