Attempt to immunize guinea pigs against leukemia by skin scarification with leukemic cell suspensions.

An attempt was made to immunize "strain 2" guinea pigs by superficial skin scarification with small doses of L2C leukemic cell suspensions. Among 203 scarified guinea pigs, 32 developed progressively growing leukemic tumors at the site of skin scarification. In 35 guinea pigs small intradermal tumors that appeared at the site of scarification regressed spontaneously; however, 15 guinea pigs in which the intradermal tumor regressed later developed generalized leukemia. In addition, 13 other animals developed generalized leukemia, without an apparent local tumor formation at the site of scarification. A total of 60 out of 203 scarified guinea pigs (30%) died from leukemia.143 Guinea pigs that survived the scarification were challenged by subcutaneous inoculation of massive doses (0.5 ml each of a 10-fold dilution from a 10% extract) of leukemic cell extracts and only 48 (34%) developed leukemia; 95 guinea pigs (66%) resisted the challenge and remained in good health. In a control experiment, 156 untreated "strain 2" guinea pigs were inoculated subcutaneously (0.5 ml each) with L2C leukemic cell suspensions of 10(-2) or 10(-3) dilution, and all but two (99%) developed generalized leukemia.