THE CANCER PROBLEM.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5235, 6 February 1928, Page 3

THE CANCER PROBLEM.

AFRICAN. RESEARCH. FURTHER ADVANCE MADE. Another advance haw been made towards the solution of the cancer problem. Dr. Margaret R. Lewis, of the Department of Embroyology of t'he Carnegie Institution of Washington, and Dr. Howard B. Andervont, of, the Johns Hopkins University, have jus,t succeeded in establishing that the unidentified organism' that causes the rous chicken sarcoma can be rendered inactive by means of small quantitie's of aluminium and calcium salts. The significance of this Work lies in its possible application in the treatment of human cancer. An immense amount of research will have to be done before any such result is likely to ensue, but these recently learned facts point the way to a Hew direction for cancer research in other laboratories- The chemicals that have been used in the treatment of cancer in the pasit have been highly toxic in character, with a strong tendency to injure other parts of the bptdy. as well as the cancer cells. If it is found that calcium and aluminium compounds/ejtlier given by the mouth or injected into the blood streajh, will have an adverse effect on cancer in chickens, it may lead to results of great benefit in treating human cancer, because these compounds are more or inert, with little capacity to harm body tissues.

“While the primary tumour of this particular type of malignant chicken cancer differs in some respects from those found- in human beings and higher animals,” explained Dr. Lewis, “the secondary tumours or mefasteses, as they are called, are similar to themalignant sarcoma of man. The chicken tumour behaves qtiite as .those of other kinds of. animals ini that it invades the tissue, develops metastases, leads to the daath of the animal, and can be transferred by means of transplantation from one animal to another of the same species, though not, of course? to) an animal of a different species.

. “The chicken tumour also resembles certain other diseases in that it is caused by a, still unidentified agent that behaves like the so-called filterable viruses responsible f°r smallpox, rabies, and encephalitis in rabbits. Many years ago Dr. Peyton Rous and Dr. J. B. Murphy, of. the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, found that the causative, agent of chicken tumour remained active in a filtrate, a glycerine extract, or in the dried material of the tumour itself. It was also also established by these workers, that inoculation of these agents not only produced the disease, but if the animal recovered from the tumour it was more or less immune from further inoculation of the tumour virus.”