Enhanced growth of syngeneic Moloney sarcoma with decreased immunity in the regressors

S.c. cellular transplants of MS tumours have a high incidence of rejection in adult BALB/c mice, which can then be used as syngeneic regressors. When these tumours were inoculated within a glass cylinder which had been implanted s.c. in BALB/c mice 2 days earlier, 51% of the animals died with progressively growing tumours, compared with 2% in animals which had received the same inoculum directly s.c. This experimental model demonstrates tumour enhancement in a syngeneic system, and duplicates what has been previously reported in two different allogeneic tumour-host combinations, where it was demonstrated that immunological enhancement was operating, since the addition of either progressor serum or soluble tumour antigen significantly increased tumour incidence. For the purpose of investigating whether the glass cylinder model could also modify the immune response of the host to a second tumour challenge, a leukaemia virus known to crossreact with MS was used. Regressors were challenged i.p. with a lethal dose of a leukaemia virus, PLLV. Regressors bearing a glass cylinder showed a 22% survival rate which was significantly lower than that of the s.c. inoculated regressors (71%). This decrease in cross-immunity suggests that the artificially constructed privileged site created by the glass cylinder, by conditioning for tumour enhancement, also decreases immunological memory.