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The Virus-induced Rabbit Papilloma-to-Carcinoma Sequence

II. Carcinomas in the Natural Host, the Cottontail Rabbit^*

Jerome T. Syverton, M.D., Harry E. Dascomb, M.D.^,, E. Buist Wells, M.D.^,, Jacob Koomen, Jr., M.D.^, and George Packer Berry, M.D.

(From the Department of Bacteriology, University of Rochester, School of Medicine and Dentistry, Rochester, New York)

Cancers commonly develop from virus-induced papillomas (Shope) in the natural host, the cottontail rabbit. Thirty-two of the 127 cottontail rabbits which were kept under observation for more than 6 months yielded 106 tumors, which were proved to be epidermoid carcinomas by histologic study. Metastases occurred in 19 of the 32 rabbits. Attempts to recover papilloma virus from the carcinomas met with failure in 106 instances; yet the virus was readily recovered from 12 of the 40 benign papillomas which were removed from 26 of the 32 rabbits that also had proved cancers.

The development of cancers from papillomas in more than one-fourth of the cottontails under observation is similar to the development of cancer in the experimental host, the domestic rabbit. It may be concluded from these results that many of the hypothetical considerations which were founded on the supposed rarity of cancer in the natural host for the papilloma virus, the cottontail rabbit, are no longer tenable.

The observations of differences in host reactivity, as described in this paper, were accepted as especially worthy of investigation (20), since, if virus is present in the ultimate cancer, it should be more readily demonstrable with the cottontail rabbit as the experimental host.

^* This investigation was aided by a grant from the Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research.

Present address: Dr. Syverton, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis; Dr. Dascomb, Louisiana State University School of Medicine, New Orleans; Dr. Wells, Thorndike Memorial Laboratory, Boston City Hospital; Dr. Koomen, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Rochester; Dr. Berry, Harvard Medical School, Boston.

Student Fellow in Bacteriology.

Received 2/27/50.