W. H. Kirsten - Böcker

This volume presents the Proceedings of the University of Chicago's third Cancer Training Grant supported Teaching Symposium. This Symposium received much of its support from grant number T12 CA 08077-02. Most of the planning of the Symposium and most of the local editing of the Proceedings was carried out by Dr. R. J. Michael Fry of the A.E.C. Argonne National Laboratory and by two members of the Advisory Committee of the Cancer Training Grant, Drs. Melvin Griem and Werner Kirsten. They carried the main responsibility for the Symposium. The subject of the Symposium, "Normal and Malignant Cell Growth," was chosen because, as the Proceedings reflect, it is a rapidly advancing field of endeavor which is of utmost importance to the understanding of the processes of malignant neoplasia. In fact, there is increasing evidence that knowledge of the kinetics of the cancer cell will greatly influence approaches to cancer therapy. Like the first two of these Teaching Symposia held in 1964 and 1966, this one attracted about 400 students and staff from this medical institution as well as from other medical centers in the Chicago area. The effective interplay of an excellent group of scientists with a lively and responsive audience was evident as they considered together a topic of great current interest in the field of neoplasia. Much of the credit for the smooth organization and implementation of the Symposium must go to Mrs.

(North American) Blastomycosis is caused by the dimorphic fungus Blastomyces dermati- tidis, first described by Gilchrist andStokes in 1896. The perfect stage was grown by Mc- Donough and Lewis in 1967 and is known as Ajellomyces dermatitidis. In the body and on appropriate media at 37 C, the organism presents itself as a round, thick-walled budding yeast cell, characteristically with a broad porus between mother and daughter cells. The yeast cell is multinucleated. For many years, North America was assumed to be the only place where blastomycosis was found, but recent demonstration of indigenous African cases changed this impression (Emmons et al., 1964). Within the United States, more cases are seen in Kentucky, Ohio, the Carolinas, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Tennessee, Arkansas, and the Virginias than in the remainder of the country (Chick, 1971). In Mexico, occasionally, and in the provinces of Canada adjacent to the endemic areas of the United States, endemic blasto- mycosis has been recognized. Soil has been long suspected as the habitat for the fungus, but recovery from soil has seldom been successful (Denton and Di Salvo, 1964).The primary infection is, as a rule, pulmonary with frequent secondary foci in skin, bone, male genital system, and, eventually, spares no organ in widely disseminated cases. The rare cases of primary cutaneous blastomycosis are consequences of accidental percutaneous laboratory infection. These can be clinically easily differentiated from the average case of secondary hematogenous spread to the skin (Landay and Schwarz, 1971).

The patriarch of experimental pancreas research is REIGNIER DE GRAAF (1641-1673). He carried out the first experiments with dogs in order to ob­ tain fistular secretion (1664). But only few years later, the just arisen interest in the physiology of the pancreas was severely set back by remarks of CONRAD BRUNNER. In 1682, BRUNNER expressed his belief that on the basis of experi­ ments he had carried out the pancreas was a vitally unimportant organ. He overlooked that after ligation of the main duct (discovered in the turkey by HOFMAN in 1641 and in a human cadaver by WIRSUNG in 1642), in the dog an accessory duct (described by SANTORINI in 1724) usually maintains an adequate flow of secretion. EBERLE in his monograph (1834) confirmed the emulsifying capacity of the pancreatic juice which had already been suggested by SYLVIUS (FRAN­ CISCUS DE LE BOE, 1614-1672) and he dealt with the essential enzymatic functions of the pancreatic juice such as amylolysis, lipolysis and proteolysis. Since HEIDENHAIN (1875), we know that for example trypsin (largely isolated by KUHNE in 1867) is situated in the acinar epithelial cells as zymogen in inactive form; it is thought that the action of "acid" on the glandular tissue is needed for inducing the "enzymatic activity". According to what we know now about the central role of acidosis in the activation of zymogen this topic is, of course, of topical interest.