Effect of adrenal cortical extract on the growth of certain mouse tumors.

I. TRANSPLANTED MOUSE SARCOMA 37 In the course of experiments designed to test whether adrenal cortical extracts would reduce the toxicity of Serratia marcescens polysaccharide (11) for Carworth Farms white mice bearing sarcoma 37 subcutaneously, it was noted that in one group of control mice injected intraperitoneally with 0.5 cc. of beef adrenal extract# there was a noticeable decrease in size of the tumor and a high incidence of sloughing. Further experiments demonstrated that this effect was practically confined to female mice, and that the gross changes in the appearance of the tumor in female mice were accompanied by equally striking histological changes. While the total number of mice examined has been rather limited, the removal of one of the authors (L.V.B.) to another city made it seem desirable to publish the data obtained up to this time. Since some of the tumors implanted into this strain of mice underwent spontaneous regression and sloughing, to the point of disappearance, the difference in incidence of disappearance of the implanted tumor has been used as one criterion of the effectiveness of the beef adrenal extract in producing damage to sarcoma 37 in Carworth Farms mice. Histological observations have furnished a second criterion (see below). The results on regressions are summarized in Tables I, I I I and IV. 0.5 cc. of extract was given intraperitoneaUy, usually in divided 0.1 or 0.25 cc. injections about one hour apart. Decrease in size of tumor following injections of beef adrenal extract was noted in both male and female mice. However, the inhibition of tumor growth was temporary in the males, and could not be maintained even by repeated doses of extract, whereas, in our first experiment, in 17 of 19 females