The Oncogenicity of Human Adenoviruses in Hamsters

In 1962 we reported that human adenovirus type 12 induces undifferentiated sarcomas at the site of injection into newborn hamsters in high incidence and after a very short latent period (1,2). Extensive attempts to recover virus from such tumors have been negative in this and several other laboratories (3,4), although Connor et al. have made a preliminary report of successful virus isolation (5). Huebner and others have shown such tumors to contain small amounts of the viral structural C antigen (6,7) and larger amounts of type 12 specific tumor antigens demonstrable by complement fixation (CF) (8,9), immunofluorescence (10,11) and immunodiffusion (7) with serum of adeno-12-tumor bearing hamsters. Such sera also react with type 12 neoantigens induced in virus infected cell cultures (7,8,11). Adeno-12 tumors of hamsters and mice also contain transplantation neoantigens as revealed by induction of transplantation immunity by prior immunization of adult hamsters or isogenic mice with live adenovirus type 12 (12) or with irradiated adeno-12 tumor cells (unpublished). A significant portion of the messenger ribonucleic acid olf the polyribosomes of adeno-12 tumor ceUs and transfolrmed cells is virus specific (13). Adeno-12 has been shown to be oncogenic also in newborn mice (14), rats (3), and mastomys (IS), and to transform rabbit embryo cells in vitro (1 1). Human adenovirus types 18, 7, 31, and 3 have also been reported to induce undifferentiated tumors, lymphomas, and lymphosarcomas in newborn hamsters (16-19). Green et al. (personal communication) have uapublished data indicating that adenovirus types 14, 16 and 21 are also weakly oncogeaic. Hull et al. have reported that 6 of 18 simian adenoviruses tested were also oncogenic in newborn hamsters, solme of them highly oncogenic(20). The tumors induced were undifferentiated with some characteristics of lyrnphomas of the reticulum cell type.