SUMMARY.-Appreciable insulin occurred in transplants of a hamster and a mouse adrenal tumour. The hormone was measured by immunoassay. In hamster experiments, the weight of tumours grown in animals made mildly diabetic was five times less than those grown in controls. No insulin nor diabetic effect occurred in transplants of a mouse brain or stomach tumour.THIS work was done to see if tumours, which arise from specific organs contain insulin or not and to investigate the effect of diabetes on the growth of such tumours.Apart from insulin secreting fibrosoma of mediastinum in hypoglyeaemic patients (Lowbeer, 1961), there appear to be little assay data on the insulin content of non-pancreatic tumours. With " generalized animal tumours ", four teams have reported decreased tumour growth in alloxan diabetic or partially depancreatized animals, thus indicating a controlling influence of insulin on this growth (Walker 256 carcinoma: Goranson and Tilser, 1955;Ingle, 1958;Garvie, 1968. Erlich ascites tumour: Jehl et al., 1955. Apart from one paper using the Novikoff hepatoma (Goranson and Tilser, 1955), there seem to be no publications about the effect of diabetes on tumours arising from specific tissues. In the present work hepatomas were not used, since they are so vascular that any measurement of their insulin content would reflect both tumour and plasma insulin. As the mammary gland has a high fat content and insulin also affects fatty acid synthesis, tumours of this gland were not investigated.
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