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Increased Incidence of Mammary Tumors in the Female Rat Grafted with Multiple Pituitaries¹

Departments of Anatomy and Physiology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48823

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the role of pituitary homografts on mammary tumorigenesis in the female Sprague-Dawley rat. Five pituitaries were grafted unilaterally over the inguinal, abdominal, and thoracic regions of the mammary gland and two pituitaries were grafted underneath the kidney capsule of each rat. Pituitaries were obtained from donor rats of varying ages but of the same sex and strain as the recipients. The pituitaries were transplanted to mammary tumor-free 2-month-old nulliparous rats (Group I), 8-month-old nulliparous rats (Group II), and 8-month-old multiparous rats (Group III). Mammary tumor-free nongrafted rats of comparable age and breeding status served as controls for each group. Number and percentage of rats with mammary tumors 9 months after pituitary grafting were: Group I, 13/45 (30%); Group II, 9/12 (75%); and Group III, 8/13 (61%); this contrasted with 2/27 (7%), 1/12 (8%), and 3/16 (19%) in the nongrafted controls. Since pituitary homografts secrete relatively large amounts of prolactin and small amounts of all other pituitary hormones, the present results indicate that an additional source of prolactin significantly enhances mammary tumorigenesis in the female rat.

¹ Supported in part by NIH Research Grants CA-10771 and the National Science Foundation Grant GB17034. Reported in part at the Annual Meetings of the American Association for Cancer Research, San Francisco, Calif., March 1969.

Received 5/12/69. Accepted 10/ 3/69.

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