author's abstract of this paper issued 

 by the bibliographic service, february 3 



AN HEREDITARY TUMOR 



MARY B. STARK 



From The New York Medical College and Hospital for Wotne/i 



TWELVE FIGURES (THREE PLATES) 



A report has already been made of the injection of tumor-cell 

 suspension of Drosophila into normal larvae (Jour, of Cane. 

 Res., July, 1918). Although nearly one-half of these larvae sur- 

 vived the operation and were active for at least twelve hours, 

 they eventually died without completing metamorphosis. Death 

 may have been due to the toxic effects of the cell suspension or 

 may have been due to infection. The larvae from which tumors 

 were removed and the larvae into which the cell suspension was 

 injected had been washed repeatedly in sterile water. This 

 would not, however, be sufficient to rid the larvae of all bacteria, 

 and some may have entered the body cavity with the pipette, 

 in which case infection could easily result. 



An attempt has been made to transplant the tumor into the 

 adult fly. Sixty flies have been injected with a sterile tumor- 

 cell suspension. A large percentage of these flies survived the 

 operation and lived from twenty-four to thirty-six hours. Only 

 10 per cent, however, continued to live. The great mortality 

 is again probably due to infection, brought on by contamina- 

 tion. It is almost impossible to produce a clean surface on the 

 fly for inoculation as the least moisture on the body of the fly 

 will entangle the wings and legs and cause the fly to become 

 stuck to the side of the container or to the food. I tried cutting 

 off the wings to prevent this, but these flies did not survive any 

 better than the others. Two of the six flies that continued to 

 live developed a dark spot within the place of inoculation. 

 These flies were fixed, sectioned, and stained. On microscopic 

 examination, the spot in each fly was found to be an abnormal 

 growth. In one fly the growth was found near the surface just 



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