title: The role of the skin in active specific immunization against leukemia in guinea pigs.
abstract: The L(2)C leukemia strain, which originated as spontaneous leukemia in "strain 2" guinea pigs, is transmissible by cell-graft in animals of this line; on subcutaneous inoculation it induces consistently generalized and progressive stem-cell leukemia in 99% of the inoculated animals. The leukemia thus induced never regresses. However, when very small doses of leukemic cell suspensions (0.05 ml of a 10(-6) or 10(-7) dilution) were inoculated intradermally, 86 out of 180 intradermal tumors (48%) regressed spontaneously. Most of the animals that recovered from the intradermal tumors were resistant to a challenging reinoculation of leukemic cells. This resistance could be substantially increased by a second intradermal inoculation of leukemic cells. Females were more resistant than males. When 55 immunized females and 36 males received a challenging subcutaneous reinoculation (0.5 ml each) of a leukemic cell suspension of 10(-2) dilution, only two females and six males developed leukemia; the remaining 83 animals (91%) remained in good health. In a control experiment, 126 untreated "strain 2" guinea pigs were inoculated subcutaneously with the same dose, and all but one (99%) developed leukemia. The immunity thus induced could not be transferred to other animals by a serum collected from immunized guinea pigs.
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000951:Antigens, Neoplasm; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D000939:Epitopes; D005260:Female; D006084:Graft Rejection; D006168:Guinea Pigs; D007110:Immunity, Active; D007112:Immunity, Maternally-Acquired; D007114:Immunization; D007271:Injections, Intradermal; D007279:Injections, Subcutaneous; D007942:Leukemia, Experimental / Q000276:immunology / Q000517:prevention & control*; D008297:Male; D009365:Neoplasm Regression, Spontaneous; D009368:Neoplasm Transplantation; D012737:Sex Factors; D012867:Skin / Q000276:immunology*; D012878:Skin Neoplasms / Q000276:immunology*; D014184:Transplantation, Homologous
chemical_list: D000951:Antigens, Neoplasm; D000939:Epitopes