DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE

PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE
NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH
BETHESDA, MARYLAND 20014

 

National Cancer Institute
13 May 1969

VIA ATRMATL

Dr. Joshua Lederberg
Department of Genetics
Stanford University

300 Pasteur Drive

Palo Alto, California 94304

Dear Dr. Lederberg:

We have a hamster lymphoma which, after careful study, has not been found
to contain a virus. It can be transmitted by feeding the tumor and by the
tumor cells being picked up from the blood stream by a mosquito and transferred
to another animal. This last is a new method of spreading disease, that is to
say, by the transmission of mammalian cells through a vector. It would seem
that these experimental results have to be given serious consideration as
they might apply to the transfer or origin of human tumors or even other disease
states. When broaching such an idea one usually receives the answer that a
human cell will not grow in another individual. However, the problem can
not be dismissed so easily. The immunological competence of individuals
to react to foreign cells varies considerably. Even the immunological state of
a single individual varies from time to time depending upon his health and
undoubtedly many other factors. Even various sites within a single individual
will vary in their immunological response depending upon injury, previous
immunological history and possibly other factors. To add to this, little or
no work has been done on how the body will respond to small inocula of foreign
cells, possibly directly into the blood stream,and in turn, how the inoculated
celis will respond to their new environment.

Enclosed is a summary "Hamster Lymphoma, TM'', of this work and the more
detailed publications.

I am also enclosing the first observation of polyoma in thin section.
Previous to this it was recognized that some agent was producing tumors in
mice but as a result of this work it was almost certain that a virus was the
agent and the race to uncover tumor viruses, especially in man, was on. However,
in man, no malignant tumor virus has yet been found.
 

I have been following your column since it first appeared in the Washington
Post having known of you from about 1945 at Yale and after that through
Kay Wilson a very good friend of mine. Since you did not seem to be aware of

the cell transfer possibility in your cancer articles, I thought that this
might be of interest to you,

Sincerely yours,
William G. Banfield, MD.
Laboratory of Pathology

Enclosures