Production of a Precipitin against Renal Cancer

Abstract

The possibility of provoking antibodies to cancer, apart from its fundamental interest in relation to one type of host resistance, could have therapeutic implications (Brit. med. J., 1959; Goldman, 1961; Southam, 1961; Mellors, 1962; Mihich, 1962). If antibodies to tumours could be obtained they might provide, either alone or after combination with radioactive or cytotoxic chemicals, a new class of specific therapeutic agents. Autoantibodies to tumours, usually in low titre, have been described in several studies, as have apparently successful efforts to raise their titre with vaccines prepared from autologous tumour (Finney et al., 1960). The success of these measures would depend on the presence in tumours of specific antigens absent from normal tissues. Although incontrovertible evidence of such antigens has not yet been obtained, it is not unlikely that tumours with a characteristic morphology may contain specific chemical substances which confer structural individuality. This is not to say that there is necessarily a common specific antigen for all or even several kinds of neoplasm, but merely that histologically or histogenetically related neoplasms may share unique antigenic material.