Tobacco Documents Online

The paper on viruses and cancer was widely reported. < rop3nc4 LA 14 dd SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN May 1962 Human Cold, Animal Cancer A virus that causes upper respiratory infection in man can produce can- cer in hamsters. So reported John J. Trentin, Yoshiro Yabe and Gi-ant Taylor of the Bavlor Universitv College of' Medicine at the meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in At- lantic City, N.J., last monthi Like manv other investigators, the Baylor workers have been trying, so far unsuccessfully, to isolate specific human tumor viruses from patients witlhcancer. A standard technique in this research is to inject*extrricts that may contain such viruses into animals susceptible to virus- induced tumors. The Baylbr group de- cided to try injecting instead some known liuman1 \-irus. The idea was suggested bv the fact that certain animal virusess have been found to cause both acute infections and, as a later effect, cancer. \toreover, these viruses cannot alwavs be recovered from the tumors that'. they produce. As an experimental animal Trentin and his colleagues chose the Syrian ham- ster, .vhich is susceptible to cancer viruses from~other species of'animals. As experimental viruses they selected the group known as adenoviruses because of a general resemblance to some animal tumor viruses. Nine different types of adenovirus were inoculated into the lungs of newborn hamsters. Eight had! no efiectl However, the ninth, adeno- %;rus Type 12, produced malignant thoracic tumors iir=4J of 45 animals with- in three rr,onths: Type 12 is one of the rarer of the 28 related viruses isolated to dhte from the aclenoids„tonsils or throats oflpatients with~upper respiratory infections or his- tories of recentinf'ec•tion. Much further research, Trentin emphasized, will be required to determine whether or not it plays any part in human cancer. NEW YORK HERALD TRIBIJNE New York, New York April 11+, 1962 Common Yariety Viruses, Cancer Are Linked Anew By Earl Ubell Sciencs Editor ATLANTIC CITY. The audience of virus and cancer experts asked one searching question after an- other of the team of scientists from Houston, Tex. In the end their discovery stood firm: For the first time they had un- masked the cancer-causing proclivities of a common human virus-one that could cause a sore throat or a Pink eye. This virus, called adenovirus-12, probably has infected one per- aon in four. ~ So far, the three scientists have shot their virus only into che lungs of hamsters where, within a few months, large, lethal cancers grew. They lack ,proof this "sore-throat" virus touches off cancer In human beings. g However, A-12's bad behavior -displayed to the opening ses- sibns of the American Associa- tion for Cancer Research- draws tighter the strings on the virus theory of cancer. This theory holds that viruses, tiny bundles of chesnicals, can infect tissue, causing It to grow wildly into cancer. Viruses of different spccies can cause different diseases, like polio, measles and yellow fever. While many scientists have four.3 viruses to provoke malig- nant growths in mice, rats, hamsters, rabbits and ot'her creatures, none hqs unequivc- cally identified a human virus that does so. The Houston sci- entists have taken a big step toward that goal: They have a virus capable of infecting human beings and which, in hamsters, can cause cancer. Dr. Duran-Reynals believed common viruses could, under the right conditions, be cancer- causing. He labored mightily to prove his content'ion until he died a few years ago. In Texas, Dr. J. J. Trentin, Yoshiro Yabe and Grant Tay- ior went to work on the same blem with modern tools of ndling viruses. They set out check systematibally the own viruses with a cancer- using ability. They started on a group known as adenoviruses becausee in human beings they come from the nose and throat (adeno: throat). Scientists at the National Institutes of Health had eighteen strains of adenovL-us alive and under study. The Houston group took nine and iniected them into hamsters. Only A-12 produced the cancers. But the Cancer Association's super-expert audience did not buy the results so quickly., Could the hamster cancers come from contaminating vi- ruses already known to produce cancer? Two such viruses can do so: Polyoma and SV-40. ~ Polyoma virus produces can-~Y ~ cer In mice and hamsters, but ~ a qu!ck chemical check ruled it out'. 8V-40 was more of a~ problem. This virus comes frolnn monkeys and seems to be wide- spread in flasks containing growing monkey cells or tis- sues. On°, of the scary things abouL this virus is that it has been found in live and killed polio vaccine., which is grown on monkey tissue. After a series of tests, however, the Houston group convinced themselves and most of the experts that their virus was not SV-40. The three men from Baylor Might It be some other un- University Medical School and known contaminant from the M. D. Anderson Hospital dis- monkey cells in which the A-12 covered A-12's cancerous bent'~ had once been grown? They did by following up an old idea of not think so because human the late Dr. Francisco Duran- blood serum from persons who Reynals, of Yale, one of the have the tell-tale signs of an earliest proponents of thevirm- A-12 infection will knock out cancer concept. the cancerous properties of A-12. If there were a monkey contaminant, there would be little reason for the human ;serum to have this effect. .. v....,w-,.,.a.:...r~.•.Q;7VI