Viruses, Nucleic Acids and Cancer

the Seventeenth Annual Symposium on Fundamental Cancer Research, 1963. Edited by R. W. Cumley. (Pp. 669; figs. 288. 128s.) London: Bailliere, Tindall & Cox, 1964. V IRUSES, Nucleic Acids and Cancer is a collection of papers presented at the 17th Annual Symposium on Fundamental Cancer Research in 1963. It is a book for research workers, by research workers and is primarily concerned with oncogenic viruses. Those not working in this field may find it rewarding to read a few of the papers such as the one by Dr. Horsfall on "The role of viruses in relation to cancer in animals and man," but by and large it is not a book for the general reader. Not so many years ago the few avian and mammalian oncogenic viruses which were known were considered oddities with no special relevance to the problem of malignant tumours in man. Now the situation has changed dramatically. Though the association of viruses with human leukaemia and cancer has yet to be shown conclusively there are few who now doubt that viruses play some part in the aetiology of some of the malignant tumours of man. This change in outlook has been brought about by our increased knowledge of oncogenic viruses in birds and mammals and much of the important recent work on this subject is brought together in Viruses, Nucleic Acids and Cancer. The close relationship of oncogenic viruses both in structure and biological properties to the more familiar viruses of infectious disease is apparent in many of the contributions. For example, the electron miiicrographs taken by Dr. Dmochowski and his associates of the Bittner milk-factor virus show it to resemble influenza virus in structure and Dr. Trentin and his colleagues describe the oncogenicity in animals of human adenovirus type 12. Dr. Hilleman in a general survey of mammalian oncogenic viruses stresses their ordinariness and points out that their ability to cause proliferative disease appears to be an unusual property only manifesting itself under certain circumstances. He speculates that cancer prophylaxis by means of conventional killed virus vaccines may be possible in the future. The contributions to this book are many and varied, but the majority are of a high standard and it can be recommended without reservation to those who are prepared to follow what one might almost call the day to day progress in this particular field of research. D. S. D.