232 LIFE: ITS NATURE AND ORIGIN 



themselves in tissue culture, no steady supply of the original 

 carcinogen itself need be furnished; but in some instances a steady 

 supply of activating substance may be important or essential. 

 Thus Dr. Charles Huggins of the Dept. of Surgery, Univ. of 

 Chicago, stated 36 * that "it is possible by reducing the amount or 

 the activity of circulating androgens to control, more or less but 

 often extensively, far-advanced prostatic cancer in large numbers 

 of patients. In this special case, androgen control seriously dis- 

 turbs the enzyme mosaic of the cancer cells at least with respect to 

 the important energy producing protein-catalysts, the phosphatases. 

 As a contribution to the problem of cancer treatment, it is well 

 to emphasize that any interference with an important enzyme 

 system of a cell, normal or malignant, will cause in that cell a 

 decrease in size and function." Apart from castration, the ad- 

 ministration of female sex hormone (estrone), or of the chemically 

 quite different diethylstilbestrol, could cut down the circulating 

 androsterone; and I am informed that this type of treatment is 

 being successfully used in prostatic cancer. 



It may be noted that the tendency toward cancer development 

 in older people may be related to chemical alteration of sex hor- 

 mones or their precursors, resulting in formation of carcinogenic 

 substances. 



In this connection it is interesting to refer to another case where a 

 steady supply of an activating substance has led to cancer-like develop- 

 ments. Dr. Peyton Rous, 37 of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical 

 Research, whose discovery of the Rous chicken sarcoma virus exposed 

 a new type of cancer-producing agent, states*: 



"Yet one discovery there was, made almost 40 years back, 38 which 

 justified the inference — though this has only lately been drawn — that 

 an actuating cause for neoplastic change need not necessarily originate 

 within the cell. A certain few substances, notably the fat-soluble dyes 

 Sudan III and Scharlach R, when dissolved in olive oil and injected 

 just beneath the covering epithelium of the skin, will cause its cells to 

 proliferate vigorously and invade the underlying tissue like those of 

 a carcinoma. They may even penetrate into the blood and lymph 

 vessels, though no secondary growths result. To all appearance an 

 active epidermal cancer has come into being, but this state of affairs 

 continues only so long as the stimulating influence of the dye permits. 

 Within a few weeks, as the latter is carried away, the cells leave off 

 aggression and differentiate like healthy epidermal elements, and soon 



* Reprinted by permission from "Science in Progress," Series V (Yale University 

 Press) and American Scientist. 



