Intrasplenic autograft of testicular tissue in rats.

Intrasplenic heterotransplantation of infantile testis is a conventional method to produce testicular tumors in adult castrated rodents. To avoid possible immunological interference in the tumorigenic process in allografted testis, the parenchyma of testis of Wistar strain rats aged 7 weeks was injected into the spleen of the same rat after bilateral gonadectomy. In 17 of 20 animals testicular neoplasms, resembling gonadal stromal cell tumors in human, developed from the intrasplenic gonadal tissue in the 14th month following transplantation. This autografting technique is feasible to induce testicular neoplasms in granulosa cell tumor category in high incidence, and thus deserves further attention.