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Ann Thorac Surg 1995;60:36-37
© 1995 The Society of Thoracic Surgeons

Discussion

	Introduction

Top Introduction

 
See also page 32.

DR ALAN G. CASSON (Toronto, Ont, Canada): I have two questions. First, how did you process the primary tumor? Was this a straightforward surgical implantation, or did you homogenize it and come up with a single-cell suspension? Second, was it one mouse per tumor specimen, or did you actually take the specimen and put it into 6 mice or 8 or 10 mice for the first generation?

MR JOHNSON: Thank you for those questions. First when we received the freshly resected tumor in our laboratory, it was coarsely minced; we coarsely minced all of the tumor we could get. In the past, enzymatic cell suspensions had proved to be too vigorous, and our take rates were greatly reduced. Second, the number of mice that received tumor injections was really dependent on the size of tumor that we received. Ordinarily we try to implant or xenotransplant tumor to 2 or 3 mice to obviate premature death of hosts.

DR WILLIAM A. FRY (Evanston, IL): What is the time interval for knowing if you are going to have a take in the nude mice?

MR JOHNSON: That is an interesting question. We follow up a mouse for a minimum of 6 months. If after 6 months no tumor has grown, we consider that a nontake.

DR FRY: Are you ready to unleash the medical oncologists on somebody without detectable metastatic disease if you get a take?

MR JOHNSON: We are not prepared to suggest that yet. One thing I can tell you is that ordinarily when tumors did take, they took, and there was palpable evidence of growth that could be histologically confirmed within 2 to 3 months. The longest it has ever taken for a xenotransplant to actually grow was about 5 months, and that is why we set the 6-month limit.

DR FRY: I think this is very interesting work, and I await further results.

DR STEVEN J. MENTZER (Boston, MA): Mr Johnson, you have demonstrated very nicely that some of these tumors are capable of growing in unexpected places. For example, tumors were able to grow on the back of a mouse and, by analogy, in metastatic sites in the human. Some tumors that you studied, however, did not grow in the mouse. Did you try to inject them in a more expected site such as the lung?

MR JOHNSON: To date, we have not tried orthotopic transplantation of our lung tumors. A true orthotopic model of bronchogenic carcinoma is very difficult to accomplish. Others have injected tumor into the parenchyma or into the pleural space, but we have not yet tried that. We get a one-time shot with the tumor we receive from the pathology department, and usually all of it goes into the subcutaneous space.

DR MENTZER: The argument would be the classic seed and soil argument.

MR JOHNSON: Correct.

DR MENTZER: In transplanting across species in particular, that may be more relevant.

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