Onset and growth rate of solid tumours derived from implanted ascites tumour cells pretreated with ascorbic acid

A study on the onset and growth kinetics of solid tumours obtained by injecting ATP C+ cells preincubated with ascorbic acid, iodoacetate or citric acid into BALB Cf/Had/Se substrain mice showed that ascorbic acid was not as effective as iodoacetate in inhibiting the growth of these tumours, since higher doses of ascorbic acid were required to obtain a similar effect. This suggests that ascorbic acid, unlike iodoacetate, does not act by blocking the SH groups. Furthermore, not only did incubation of ATP C+ cells with lower doses of ascorbic acid fail to inhibit tumour growth, but rather favoured the growth of solid tumours derived from these cells. Other experiments designed to evaluate the degree of immunity provided by ascorbic acid, iodoacetate and citric acid pretreated cells in mice indicated that such treatment was of limited efficiency, since it considerably reduced the antigenicity of the cells.