Growth stimulation following serum transfer from carcinogen-treated donors to normal rats: a new aspect of early carcinogen actions.

Especially in their early phase of action carcinogens are strong inhibitors of cell proliferation. This is an apparent contradiction to the promoting activity of oncogens in the process of carcinogenesis. Because of obvious similarities between restorative and neoplastic growth processess on the tissue level we have studied the possibility, whether such similarities do exist also with regard to stimulatory activities in the serum. To overcome the non-specific inhibitory effect of a carcinogen, the serum of 2-acetylaminofluorene (AAF) treated male Sprague-Dawley rats was transferred to normal recipients. The results demonstrate that the proliferation of the same tissues (hepatocytes, adrenocortical cells, thymocytes) as in liver regenerating animals were stimulated by the serum of the carcinogen-treated rats. Whether the observed short-term effect corresponds to the so-called promoting activity of the carcinogen(s) is discussed. Nature and origin of the humoral stimulator(s) are still unknown.