• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

CANCER RESEARCH VOLUME16 OCTOBER 1956 NUMBER9 Cancer Research in the United Kingdom GUEST EDITORIAL Cancer research in the United Kingdom has its morphism;" other subjects under investigation roots in the traditions of British medicine, surgery, include mammary cancer, fowl leukosis, and en and pathology in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th docrine and azo dye carcinogenesis. A later de centuries. For practical purposes, it may be said velopment in the history of the Fund has been to have begun when Percivall Pott (1713-88), the establishment of a clinico-pathological labora surgeon to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, who was tory at Lincoln's Inn Fields, under the direction aware of Ramazzini's accounts of the morbi arti- of Geoffrey Hadfield, whose recent work on urinary ficum, described the particular form of cancer mammotrophin has evoked so much attention. occurring in chimney-sweeps (cancer scroti, in Not long after the establishment of the Imperial Chirurgical Observations, 1775), and traced it to Cancer Research Fund came the foundation in contamination of the skin by soot. Over the next 1909 of the Research Institute of the Royal Cancer century, numerous classical contributions to the Hospital. First directed by Alexander Paine (of study of this and many other aspects of the cancer Poynton and Paine's Streptococcus rheumaticus problem were made through the work of such men fame), its early staff included such notable figures as John Hunter, Hodgkin, Earle, Astley Cooper, as Jack (later Sir Jack) Drummond and Casimir Hughes Bennett, Paget, Joseph Bell, Butlin, and Funk, then working, respectively, on the amino Bland-Sutton—to name but a few. About the acid composition of tumors and on "vitamines," century's turn, it became apparent to various which term the latter had coined. It is perhaps Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians of not without significance that so much of this early London, and of the Royal College of Surgeons work lay in the field of nutrition. Paine was suc of England—wise in their day and generation— ceeded by Archibald Leitch, who inaugurated the that effort should not be confined to clinical medi Institute's continuing interest in chemical car cine and surgical pathology alone, but that a new cinogenesis, later to be developed to such purpose attack was needed through the experimental by his own successor, Professor (now Sir Ernest) method. Thus came about the foundation in 1902, Kennaway, and by J. W. Cook and their school. under the aegis of these bodies, of the laboratories The Institute, together with the research units of of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. There the Physics and Radiotherapy departments of the very soon followed, through the brilliant director Royal Cancer Hospital (now under the direction ship of E. F. Bashford and the work of a team of Professor W. V. Mayneord and Professor D. W. of pioneers including J. A. Murray, W. Cramer, Smithers, respectively) was soon recognized as a M. Haaland, B. R. G. Russell, and (for a time) school of the University of London. In 1939 re- Woglom, a formidable contribution to our early designated the Chester Beatty Research Institute knowledge of the biological characteristics of the in recognition of a great benefactor, it now, to cancer cell—knowledge enshrined in what Peyton gether with the same research units, constitutes Rous has called the wonderful "powder-blue the Institute of Cancer Research: Royal Cancer volumes" of the Fund's Scientific Reports. The Hospital, as an Institute of the British Post Fund's experimental laboratories are directed at graduate Medical Federation and a University the present time by James Craigie, who with great School, financed however mainly through the technical prowess has made an outstanding con Medical Research Council. tribution to problems of the survival of tumor A new development took place with the in cells in vitro, with special reference to "para- auguration, in 1923, of the British Empire Cancer 821 Thi, One NL23-E1Y-DRUN Downloaded from cancerres.aacrjournals.org on September 26, 2021. © 1956 American Association for Cancer Research. 8-2-,' Cancer Research Campaign. Primarily a fund-raising body, the continues his investigations of the role of protein Campaign, guided by its Scientific Advisory Com binding and of the importance of the sub-epithelial mittee, annually distributes support to a wide tissues in the induction of cancer of the skin; while range of University medical school and hospital at the London Hospital, Salaman and Roe are laboratories and to individual workers, engaged pursuing their study of the initiating and promot upon almost every aspect of cancer research and ing stages, in extension of the general theory including, for example, the research laboratories developed by Berenblum at Oxford several years of the Middlesex Hospital (comprising the Bland- ago. At the Institute of Cancer Research much Sutton Institute of Pathology, the Courtauld attention is still being given to the biological Institute of Biochemistry, the Barnato-Joel labora alkylating agents as carcinogens and mutagens, tories, and the Meyerstein Institute of Radio through the work of Bergel, Ross, Elson, Fahmy, therapy, under Professor R. W. Scarff, Sir Charles Réveil,Alexander, and many others, with the Dodds, Professor J. E. Roberts, and Professor provisional conclusion, similar to that reached B. W. Windeyer, respectively), the Institute of for the azo carcinogens by the Millers at Madison Cancer Research: Royal Cancer Hospital, St. from an altogether different approach, that these Bartholomew's Hospital, Mount Vernon Hospital agents may operate by inducing a kind of somatic and Radium Institute, Westminster Hospital, mutation by loss. As to the carcinogenic amines, Guy's Hospital, the London Hospital, St. George's the hypothesis of Clay son, that the carcinogenicity Hospital, Marie Curie Hospital, St. Mark's Hos of amines depends upon more rapid conversion to pital, the Hospital for Sick Children, the Royal Col o-aminophenol derivatives, continues to be tested; lege of Surgeons of England, the Yorkshire Council, and the redevelopment of the technic of direct the North of England Council, the Birmingham vesical implantation of carcinogens, by Bonser and Branch, the Cambridge University Research Jull at Leeds, has been of great service in the Centre, the Oxford Cancer Research Committee, special case of cancer of the bladder. It should the Royal Beatson Memorial Hospital (Glasgow), be noted that substantial contributions to our the Christie Hospital and Holt Radium Institute knowledge of the carcinogenicity both of the aro (Manchester), Bristol University Cancer Research matic amines (especially of p-xenylamine and its Committee, and the Nottinghamshire Branch. derivatives) and of the alkylating ethyleneimines Thus, the Campaign's Annual Reports provide as have been made by Walpole and his associates good a conspectus as can anywhere be obtained, in the laboratories of Imperial Chemical Industries of cancer research in the United Kingdom—and at Manchester. In spite of the great difficulties also in the Empire, through the reports from in deciphering their mode of action, the carcino Canada, Australia, New 'Zealand, South Africa, genic hydrocarbons themselves are by no means and elsewhere—over more than 30 years. Apart forgotten: their metabolic transformations con from its main work (which resulted in the pro tinue to be studied by Boyland and his group at vision of some £400,000last year), the Campaign the Institute of Cancer Research and by Chalmers is also responsible for an Animal Supply Unit at the Royal Beatson Memorial Hospital in (in the University of Edinburgh), and for a Re Glasgow, among other centers ; and studies of the search Unit in Radiobiology (at Mount Vernon crystallographic structure of some of them have Hospital), sponsors the British Journal of Cancer been carried out by J. Monteath Robertson at the (now ending its 10th year), and organizes occa University of Glasgow, by J. Iball at the Uni sional informal scientific conferences. Through its versity of St. Andrews, and by R. Mason at Clinical Cancer Research Committee, the Cam University College, London. paign has also been able to make a notable con Apart from chemical agents, the subject of tribution to our knowledge of the incidence and carcinogenesis by ionizing radiations continues to natural history of cancer in its major forms. assume increasing importance in Britain as else Any attempt to survey adequately recent or where, and special note is drawn to the survey current work must of necessity fail, and also be by Court Brown and Doll, in part prepared for grossly incomplete, yet enough may be said to the recent Medical Research Council investigation give a rather general picture. In the field of of the hazards of nuclear and allied radiations, chemical carcinogenesis, a detailed study of the of leukemia in patients treated with x-rays for carcinogenic properties of mineral oils is being ankylosing spondylitis. The biological and chemi conducted by a Committee of the Medical Re cal basis of radiation effects is also being inten search Council. As to the mechanism of cancer- sively studied at such centers as the Medical producing substances, J. W. Orr at Birmingham Research Council Radiobiology Unit at Harwell, Downloaded from cancerres.aacrjournals.org on September 26, 2021. © 1956 American Association for Cancer Research. HADDOW—Cancer Research in the United Kingdom 823 where Loutit and Ford have recently conducted cell, much stimulus has come from the proposal their noteworthy experiments on the mechanism of Watson and Crick as to the structure of DNA, of protection by bone marrow; at the Institute and from the work of Wilkins and others at the Wheatstone Physics Laboratory, King's College, of Cancer Research by Mayneord and Lamerton ; at the Medical Research Council Radiotherapy London, upon which it was partly based. In Unit at Hammersmith Hospital; at the Depart particular, J.

Load more

  5

Copy Link