Prevention of tumors in rats by cross-protective immunization.

F344 inbred were repeatedly immunized (days 0, 28, and 42) with normal syngeneic or allogeneic rat tissues or transplantable syngeneic or allogeneic rat tumors (some of which were virus producing). Immunized rats were challenged by sc injection of 10(5) or 10(6) syngeneic rat tumor cells from either of two different tumor lines. Successful cross-protective immunization prevented tumor development in rats that were challenged at 100-1,000 times the 50% tumor dose. The protection was essentially lifelong and complete in that no tumors appeared up to 200 days post challenge in some experiments. To be successful, the tumor cell vaccines had to express a complement-fixing cross-reacting antigen detected with sera from rats bearing any of several different tumors and to be able to induce a spontaneously regressing tumor in the host.