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Mouse Leukemia

XIV. Freeing Transplanted Line I from a Contaminating Virus

(From the Department of Genetics, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.)

A non-bacterial, self-reproducing agent, apparently a virus, that has been transplanted along with the leukemic cells of line I for probably more than a decade, has been isolated from mice carrying this leukemia. This virus, in C58 mice, induces a non-lethal sickness: strong hypertrophy of lymph nodes and spleen; involution of thymus; moderately high white blood cell counts (chiefly medium lymphocytes); and sudden loss of weight after 7 days, accompanying inactivity, moist hair and sticky eyes. Reinfection is invariably resisted. By passing line I leukemia through hosts that have recovered from virus sickness, these leukemic cells have been freed from the virus. Using large doses of leukemic cells that kill before the external signs of virus sickness can appear, the comparison of virus-free and virus-carrying branches of line I indicates that the presence of the virus is responsible for: slight shortening of the average interval before death; reduction in spleen size; increase in peritoneal ascites; intensification of hyperemia of leukemic lesions; and greater frequency of small lung hemorrhages. Using an extremely small dose, leukemia develops in none of the mice inoculated with the virus-infected branch of line I, but kills almost all inoculated with the virus-free branch.

Agents with similar, but not identical, action that induce resistance to the above virus from line I have been obtained from other lines of transplanted leukemia and three of these lines have been freed from their contaminants by like methods.

^* Dr. Mark Adams, New York University College of Medicine, contributed considerable time and thought, and proposed the tests employed for bacteria and virus.