This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Hughes, P. E. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Hughes, P. E.

The Significance of Staining Reactions of Preneoplastic Rat Liver with Fluorescein-Globulin Complexes^*

( Department of Pathology, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia)

1. During aminoazo dye carcinogenesis, islands of morphologically normal parenchymal cells could be found in the livers of most rats which had lost their affinity for fluorescein rabbit globulin complexes. This staining characteristic persisted long after the carcinogen was discontinued.

2. In any group of rats on a particular aminoazo carcinogen, there is a wide variation in the rate at which these areas appear. However, in an investigation with a variety of dyes, a correlation was found between the rate of appearance of these islands and the carcinogenicity of the particular dyes fed.

3. This staining reaction depended not upon an antibody-antigen reaction but probably upon protein-protein interactions. If this is so, the more basic of the soluble cytoplasmic proteins, which include most of the carcinogen-binding protein(s) investigated by Miller and Miller (27), could be implicated. The observations made of this phenomenon thus lend indirect support to the protein deletion hypothesis.

4. Since differential staining of neoplastic and non-neoplastic tissues could be observed with fluorescein-conjugated normal rabbit globulin, any interpretation of the results obtained by fluorescent antibody technics will require great caution and very careful control staining before changes can be attributed to an antibody-antigen reaction.

^* This work was supported by a grant from the Anti-Cancer Council of Victoria.

Received 11/15/57.