The induction of the initiating phase of skin carcinogenesis in the mouse by oral administration of urethane (ethyl carbamate).
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An hepatic disease caused by a filterable agent carried in leukemic mice is described. Ordinarily the virus remains latent and asymptomatic. If, however, the mice are treated with urethane or methylformamide before and after virus inoculation, the disease becomes manifest and is characterized by extremely marked liver necrosis. Infant mice, a large percentage of weanlings, and adult Bagg albino mice are killed when injected with a filtrate from organs of diseased animals. Adult F1 and Swiss mice show signs of the disease but generally recover. They succumb, however, when simultaneously treated with urethane or methylformamide. By continuing the treatment of consecutive transfer generations an acute disease can be induced which finally kills all adult F1 mice without the treatment. At this stage the original leukemia may be lost. Mice which have recovered from the subacute disease are resistant to the acute disease, and mice injected with the latent form of the agent are immune to the subacute disease. However, even immunized animals lose their resistance if they are treated with urethane. The acute or subacute disease can be reduced to the latent stage by passing the agent through several generations of immunized animals. The relationship of this hepatitis virus of mice to viruses causing similar diseases is discussed, as is the possibility that these agents are closely related, if not identical.
Three spontaneous pulmonary adenomas of C mice, morphologically resembling those induced by methylcholanthrene or urethane, were propagated in host after host under conditions such that the neoplastic cells were directly exposed, while proliferating, to one or the other of these agents. The successive periods of test lasted for more than a year in some instances, the total exposure to the carcinogens far exceeding that required to change normal pulmonary cells into adenoma cells. One of the adenomas remained unaltered, and the others underwent cancerous changes; but these took place with equal frequency in the control growths, and their occurrence was neither hastened nor delayed by the carcinogens. Two polymorphous mammary carcinomas of "milk-factor" type, with the characteristic tendency to form acini and tubules, were exposed to methylcholanthrene in the same way as the pulmonary adenomas and for periods quite as long. Their cells continued to differentiate, and in other respects underwent no significant change. Urethane had no influence on the rate of growth of the adenomas exposed to it; methylcholanthrene, on the other hand, markedly retarded the enlargement both of them and of the mammary tumors. Its inhibitory influence was not passed on from cell to cell however; when freed of the carcinogen by further transplantation, the retarded tumors grew as fast as the controls. Furthermore the retardation caused no evident delay in the occurrence of cancerous changes in the adenomas. One of the adenomas was maintained in twelve parallel lines while under test and new tumors arose in nine of them, the earliest appearing more than fifteen months after initial transfer of the growth. Always it was an adenoma solidum, this appearing almost concurrently in eight of the nine lines. In six of them it was soon followed by carcinomas, the sequence of events and the morphological findings both indicating that they had derived from it. Individually the cancers were widely various, but they were similar on the whole from line to line. Carcinomas of a wholly different aspect arose from the other adenoma undergoing cancerous change, and they were not preceded by adenoma solidum. In both instances the character of the superimposed neoplastic alterations seemed to have been determined by some inherent trait of the adenoma concerned.
The process of carcinogenesis following exposure of mice to urethane is demonstrated in the present work to be intimately related to nucleic acid synthesis. Injection of animals with a DNA hydrolysate immediately prior to a single exposure of the animals to urethane markedly reduced the number of pulmonary adenomas initiated. Aminopterin, known to interfere in nucleic acid synthesis (46), potentiated the carcinogenic action of urethane and this potentiation was blocked by injection of a DNA hydrolysate. Of the components and precursors of nucleic acids the pyrimidine series seemed especially concerned. Alterations in the utilization of oxaloacetate, ureidosuccinic acid, dihydro-orotic acid, orotic acid, cytidylic acid, and thymine appeared to be critical steps in the oncogenic process, following upon the primary disorder of cellular metabolism initiated by the carcinogen. All these substances except oxaloacetate profoundly reduced the number of tumors initiated by urethane. Oxaloacetate potentiated the carcinogenic effect. When these results are viewed together and in relation to known facts concerning nucleic acid synthesis they provide evidence suggesting that the point of action of the carcinogen is in the pathway of nucleic acid synthesis below orotic acid and perhaps at the level of ureidosuccinic acid. The potentiating influence of adenine, 4-amino-5-imidazole carboxamide, and aminopterin, the lack of effect of uracil, and the inhibitory influence of thymine together suggest that DNA rather than RNA is the nucleic acid critical to the oncogenic response of mice to urethane.
Urethane, given parenterally or orally to mice, increased the severity of PVM infection. Not only were the lesions more extensive but mice could be infected with smaller inocula of virus and the multiplication of virus in the lung was enhanced. There was atrophy of lymphoid tissues but no suppression was noted of antibody formation. No relation could be found between PVM infection and the development of pulmonary adenomas in mice.
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