Combination heparin plus cortisone treatment of two transplanted tumors in C3H/He mice

C3H/He inbred mice bearing either C3H mouse mammary or RIF-1 tumors of 180-mm3 volume were treated with a combination of heparin (500 anticoagulation U/ml drinking water) plus cortisone (either 250 mg/kg/day tapering to 37 mg/kg/day or a constant dose of 75 mg/kg/day). Five types of heparin were tested in this study. RIF-1 tumors shrank to approximately half the volume at the start of therapy after only 3 days of treatment; mammary tumors took longer to respond, not reaching half the starting volume until after 11 days of treatment. In both tumors response was transient, the tumors eventually regrowing. However, response to combined heparin and cortisone therapy was in fact no different from the response to cortisone used alone. Also, cortisone treatment was extremely toxic to these animals and experiments had to be terminated after about 3 weeks of therapy.