Administration of ethylnitrosourea to neonate hamsters increases growth and frequency of SV40-induced fibrosarcomas.

The in vivo interaction between the chemical carcinogen ethylnitrosourea (ENU) and the oncogenic simian virus 40 (SV40) was studied. Inbred newborn Syrian golden hamsters were injected subcutaneously with SV40 (5 x 10(6) plaque-forming units), ENU (0.5% solution, 125 or 25 mg/kg body wt), or equal mixtures of the two. Animals that received SV40 and ENU developed more tumors (100% vs 52%) within a shorter latent period (10 weeks vs 18 weeks) than animals that received SV40 alone. Animals given SV40 and ENU showed increased mortality and increased metastatic tumors (54.2% vs 30.8%) compared with those given SV40 alone. The SV40 and ENU group also exhibited multiple (greater than 10 nodules) pulmonary metastases (33.3% vs 7.7%) and metastases in multiple organs (12.5% vs 0%) compared with animals injected with SV40 alone. No difference in primary tumor size, histology, and SV40 T-antigen content was detected between SV40- and SV40/ENU-induced tumors. Four weeks after SV40 or SV40 plus ENU treatment, animals were challenged intradermally with 2.7 x 10(6) SV40-transformed hamster cells. Five weeks after challenge, 89.5% of the animals treated with SV40 and ENU and 45.4% of animals treated with SV40 developed tumors at the challenge site. Newborn animals given SV40 and ENU developed larger tumors at the challenge site (P less than 0.002) than newborns treated with SV40 alone. Thus, administration of ENU to hamsters during the neonatal stage of development produced a long-lasting systemic effect that enhanced tumor development by transplanted SV40-transformed hamster cells.