Cancer Virus

In spite of generations of experience and all the thousands of case histories, cancer research has advanced at a turtle's pace. Doctors acknowledge the basic truisms that cancer is cell growth gone wild, that cases discovered early can sometimes be cured through X ray, surgery, radioactive substances. But beyond that, chains of ignorance still bind their hands.

This week at the University of Minnesota, two top-level professors--Dr. Robert G. Green, expert in bacteriology and immunology, and Dr. John J. Bittner, geneticist and cancer biologist--nailed up an important signpost in medicine's fight against cancer. They reported that they had discovered: 1) a filterable virus which definitely causes breast cancer in mice; 2) an anti-cancer serum which kills the mouse cancer cells, in test tubes.

Their inquiry was begun ten years ago by Dr. Bittner at the Jackson Memorial Laboratory, Bar Harbor, Me. There Dr. Bittner discovered that a cancerous agent, which he called a milk factor, could be transmitted by cancerous mothers to young mice in nursing. Dr. Bittner now believes that the milk factor is a virus, fitting a virus' classic descriptions: 1) it grows only in living cells; 2) it is too small to be seen through a microscope; 3) when it is injected into animal tissues, immune agents are formed by the combination.

The White Powder. Working over four years with 104,275 mice, Drs. Green & Bittner developed a breed in which the cancer strain was particularly high. Bits of cancer tissue from infected high-strain mice were sliced, put in gravity-defying centrifuges. The materials thus separated from malignant cancer cells were put back in the centrifuge for a second whirl. What was left was a whitish, dustlike powder--grim carrier of the virus.

Rabbits and mice were then infected with a solution of the powder. Mice contracted cancer; rabbits did not. Antibodies, or immune agents, formed in the rabbits' bloodstreams, overpowered the virus, produced the serum used to neutralize the cancer virus in test tubes.

Conclusions reached by the Green-Bittner experiments: viruses are now shown to be more closely linked with the cancer problem; virus-infected cancer cells are entirely foreign to normal mouse cells; anti-cancer agents in the serum cause no damage to normal cells.

Bespectacled Researcher Green, said to have been the inspiration for Sinclair Lewis' Arrowsmith, works late in his basement laboratory with Dr. Bittner. The virus has been named the "Bittner Virus," in recognition of his discovery of the milk factor.

While their double-barreled discovery is unquestionably one more forward step in cancer research, Drs. Green & Bittner carefully point out that heredity, hormone influences and nutrition are still known to be factors in the appearance of cancer. But the relatively unexplored field of virus influence in mammary cancer has now been opened.

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