Carcinolytic Action and Erythrocyte Sedimentation *

During a study of the behavior of sera derived from patients with carcinoma it became obvious that with the so-called "carcinolytic reaction" consistent results were not to be obtained, although accumulating data but added to the conviction that such sera possess properties which, in their action on cancer cells, distinguish them from normal sera. Inability so to adjust a carcinoma cell-serumcomplement system that dependable readings based on cell counts could be obtained led to the application of various other possible technics in an effort to disclose some method which would make possible a differential test. Among these trials was that of sedimentation velocity under various conditions, the inference being that if the carcinoma serum lacked some specific factor present in normal serum and responsible, with the aid of complement, for lysis of the cancer cell, contact between this complemented serum and the cancer cell might well result in a medium with properties differing from those of a comparable medium derived from normal serum-complement-cancer cell mixtures, especially if the action of normal serum is truly lytic. Such a difference might be revealed by the rate at which erythrocytes, from the cancer patient or from normal blood, would sediment. Preliminary tests showed that when the serum of the cancerous individual was combined with complement and cancer cell suspension and then used with an equal volume of a 25 per cent suspension of the homologous red cells, the degree of sedimentation was slightly, but definitely, less than was the case when the serum and the cells from a normal person were used under the same conditions. Throughout a series of such tests a retardation of the Ca-erythrocytest occurred,-a result somewhat unexpected since the literature repeatedly mentions the accelerated rate at which the red cells of patients