THE present paper is the full account of work briefly reported elsewhere [Lovern et al. 1937; Edisbury et at. 1937]. The main experimental result is that fish viscera, and notably the pyloric caeca and intestines, are often very rich in vitamin A. Large deposits of vitamin in the absorptive parts of the alimentary tract make it necessary to study the possibility that vitamin A plays an essential part in food assimilation in some species. This idea is discussed in a preliminary fashion, whilst other aspects of the subject such as the physical properties of visceral oils, vitamin D content, phospholipid content, glyceride composition etc., await further study. Euler et at. [1928; 1929] showed that carotene displays vitamin A activity, in accordance with an earlier suggestion made by Steenbock. The accepted chemical structures and the known physical properties of P-carotene and vitamin A are consistent with a process 2H20 C4,H56-2C20H290H ,B-carotene 2 vitamin A first recognized in vivo by Moore [1929, 1, 2, 3]. His proofthat the administration of a diet rich in carotene results in the rat in a greatly increased accumulation of vitamin A in the liver has been confirmed and extended to fowls and rabbits [

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To determine if an immunomodulatory protein (progesterone induced blocking factor [PIBF]) that is progesterone induced and found in higher concentration during pregnancy is similarly found with increased levels in women with gynecologic cancers. Materials and Methods: A newly developed enzyme linked immunoabsorbent assay (ELISA) assay was used to measure PIBF in the sera of six women with various gynecologic cancers and compare them to five controls (three with benign tumors and two having gynecologic procedures for non-tumors. Results: The PIBF levels in women with gynecologic cancer did not rise precipitously as historical controls of women or men exposed to progesterone. The two highest PIBF levels of the 11 subjects were in women with gynecologic cancer. Conclusions: The data suggest that if PIBF helps cancer cells to evade immune surveillance, it probably operates through an intracytoplasmic presence. If an increase in sera PIBF could have been detected in women with gynecologic cancer, then this ELISA test could have been used to detect tumor recurrence. Future studies may concentrate on evaluating intracytoplasmic PIBF to possibly help determine which tumors may respond to progesterone antagonist receptors.