Studies in Immunization Against a Transplantable Cerebral Mouse Glioma

Abstract

T HE problems of management of the patient with a malignant intracranial glioma have remained essentially unchanged during the past few decades, although advances in roentgenography and electroencephalography have in many cases made earlier diagnosis possible. Most neurosurgeons would accept Ztilch's ~3 statement: Glioblastomas and medulloblastomas recur without exception even after apparently total extirpation and x-ray therapy. All apparent exceptions to this rule were later shown to have been an error of classification. The immune mechanisms of the central nervous system, particularly in relation to transplantable tumors and homografts, have not been studied extensively. The results of current t reatment of malignant gliomas, and the opportunities to study the immune mechanisms of the central nervous system should encourage investigation of the effects of immunization on transplantable cerebral gliomas. I t has been found that growth of a subcutaneously implanted glioma can be inhibited by previous immunization with mixtures of glioma and adjuvant in an isologous system, s Further investigation of this phenomenon, using intracerebral implantation of a gliomatous pellet as the challenge, was thought worth while, for a number of reasons: (1) Possible interference of certain factors, such as genetic divergence of tumor and host-cell lines after multiple transfers, might