Surgeon Fired by Son’s Death Finds Virus May Cause Cancer

ATLANTIC CITY, Sept. 28 - When Dr. James T. Grace yr. watched his two-year old son die of leukemia in 1955, the medical part of his mind thought of one thing: infection. Healthy, playful one day, the child’s temperature shot up to 105 degrees the next; his glands swelled; he became toxic and in a few months he was dead.

So Dr. Grace gave up his private practice of surgery in Nashville, Tenn., and set out to discover if leukemia, the blood cancer that killed James T. Grace 3d, was caused by a germ — a virus perhaps. He moved to the Roswell Park Cancer Research Institute in Buffalo, N.Y.    Today Dr. Grace told the American College of Surgeons’ annual meeting here that he has evidence that not only leukemia but other human cancers as well may be caused by an infectious agent.

By grinding up malignant cancers cut from leukemia and other cancer victims, Dr. Grace and his Buffalo colleagues have infected mice with the human disease. They are first to do it on a large scale. Their evidence suggests but does not prove that a virus may be the culprit in the human ailment in the same way that the viruses caused the disease in animals. It is an infection; however, it is a strange kind of infection: you have to get it before or soon after birth.

So important do scientists consider the new finding that $500,000 has been obtained to narrow the search for the cancer-causing agent. Twenty-five scientists and technicians now work with thousands of mice, hamsters and monkeys. And the virus work now dominates a new building at the Buffalo institute.

Telling the story to his fellow surgeons, Dr. Grace said that many cancers in mice, rabbits and other species can be brought on by viruses. These ultramicroscopic bundles of chemicals, which in some forms are responsible for polio, colds and a host of other diseases, usually can be recovered from the growing animal cancer. Injected into another animal, the viruses caused the malignant disease there.

But there is only one case in which a “virus-like” substance recovered from human leukemia had produced a leukemia in mice. Whether that virus actually came from the human tissue or was a contaminant is still a matter of controversy. About three years ago, Dr. Grace discovered a chemical difference bewteen normal human tissue and cancer tissue. In trying to run down the difference, Dr. Grace’s mind again turned to infection with viruses as a possibility.

Why not try infecting mice with human cancers? Other scientists were able to do this by blasting the mice with X-rays or chemicals and then transplanting a lump of cancer flesh. There was only the one doubtful case on record of a virus recovery from a human being. Dr. Grace then recalled the experiments of Dr. Ludwig Gross of the Veterans Administration Hospital in the Bronx, N.Y. Dr. Gross could transfer a virus cancer from mouse to mouse by injecting cancer extracts — not lumps of tissue — into the new-born animal, a creature literally as big as a peanut.

Dr. Grace decided to try it with extracts of human cancer. First he ground up human cancer tissue removed at surgery. Next he extracted the solid matter and all cells. To make sure there was no solid matter left, he filtered the extract. Only a virus or a non-living chemical could slip through the filter’s fine pores. He injected about 1,000 new-born mice and waited for cancers.

To make sure he wasn’t deluding himself, Dr. Grace kept a controlled group of the same family of mice. He also tried to “grow” a human cancer virus in test tubes and injected that stuff too. But neither group developed the malignant disease. The mice injected with the filtered extracts of living cancer did develop cancer, particularly pregnant mice. Although Dr. Grace took his tissue from twenty different human cancers, most of the diseased mice developed malignant breast growths.

What is Dr. Grace looking for now? He and his colleagues, Dr. J.A. DiPaolo, Dr. E.A. Mirand, both Ph.D.’s, and J.R. Haas want to identify the virus or viruses precisely. They want to grow the virus in test tubes. But there is a danger in that procedure. A virulent form of the virus could in principle infect the workers. ”We’ve turned our laboratory into Fort Know,” Dr. Grace said at an interview. “You can’t get in and out without taking a shower. We’ve already increased the deadliness of the virus so that it produces cancer in mice ib seven days rather than forty.” This was done by transferring it from animal to animal.

And eventually Dr. Grace looks toward making a preventive vaccine against disease. This can be done either with a killed virus, with the Salk technique, or with a weakened cancer virus. It’s a long way to go Dr. Grace admits, but he never again wants to watch a child die of leukemia.