CONDITIONS DETERMINING THE TRANSPLANTABILITY OF TISSUES IN THE BRAIN

Abstract

In confirmation of Shirai's observation, we find that transplantable mouse tumors grow actively when inoculated into the brains of rats, guinea pigs, and pigeons, whereas subcutaneous or intramuscular grafts in the same animals fail. This growth of foreign tissue in the brain, however, takes place only when the grafted material lies entirely in the brain tissue; if it comes in contact with the ventricle a cellular reaction takes place with resultant destruction of the graft. The growth of foreign tissue in the brain may be completely inhibited by simultaneous inoculations of a small bit of autologous but not by a bit of homologous spleen tissue. Mice highly immune to subcutaneous transplants of mouse cancer show no resistance to such tumors when the inoculation is made into the brain. Although the brain is without obvious power of resistance to implants of transplantable heteroplastic mouse tumors, yet grafts of spontaneous tumors fail to grow there even, as a rule, when tumor implanted and animal host are of the same species.