The Morphology of the Sarcomas Produced by 1:2:5:6-Dibenzanthracene

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present a series of tumors produced by the subcutaneous injection of 1:2:5:6-dibenzanthracene, from the point of view of their histological characteristics. Since the discovery by Kennaway (1) and his associates in 1932, that this substance readily produced sarcomas when dissolved in lard and injected subcutaneously into rats and mice, the finding has been confirmed in a number of laboratories, and several different methods of injecting the dibenzanthracene have been described. Berenblum and Kendal (2) produced sarcomas in fowls by means of a colloidal solution of dibenzanthracene in water injected into the breast muscle, and Boyland and Burrows (3) have recently described sarcomas produced in rats and mice by means of a colloidal aqueous solution prepared in a somewhat different manner. Lacassagne (4) obtained a tumor of the testis in a rabbit which had been injected in the testis with 1:2:5:6-dibenzanthracene dissolved in lard. This was originally regarded as a carcinoma but the author now believes it to be a tumor of the adrenal derived from aberrant adrenal tissue present in the rabbit testicle. Andervont (5) also used lard as a solvent and produced subcutaneous tumors in pure strains of mice. The same method was used by Maisin and Coolen (6) to produce sarcomas in rats. These authors have been the only ones to suggest that the sarcomas produced in this manner have a varying histogenesis. They wrote: “The tumors, which are very anaplastic, are of different histological types: some of them appear to be myosarcomas.” Previous writers had been content to designate these dibenzanthracene tumors as spindle-cell or round-cell sarcomas without detailed study of their morphology.