A Transplantable Adenocarcinoma of Salivary Glands of the Mouse

Abstract

The properties of a new spontaneous tumor originating from the salivary gland of a C3H/He mouse were studied. The three different morphological patterns (adenocystic carcinoma, solid carcinoma and anaplastic adenocarcinoma), which concomitantly occured in the tumor, correspond to an ascending order of malignancy and indicate that the cells of the intercalated duct of the gland might be involved in the histogenesis. It has been observed that this new tumor retains its original characteristics when transplanted in syngeneic hosts after 153 serial transplant generations. No growth was observed in allogeneic hosts, the random-bred Swiss mice. The conversion of the solid tumor in to the ascites form was definitely not successful, even if the recipient mice were conditioned with X-rays and cortisone. Conditioning promoted the production of metastases in the lymphnodes and lungs.