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On the Relation of Diets to the Development, Prevention and Treatment of Cancer, with Special Reference to Cancer of the Stomach and Liver^*

Five Figures

The Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, New York, N. Y.

These experimental facts demonstrate that the individual components in a diet may affect the development of liver cancer in the experimental animal. Additions of some of the essential food elements to a diet will prevent tumor growth, whereas other related materials may stimulate it. Likewise, the removal of certain elements from a diet will have a similar effect.

The unfavorable influence of Butter Yellow in producing liver cirrhosis has been counteracted by a rice diet containing 15% brewers' yeast, or liver or dried whole milk. However, once a cancerous condition has been established in the liver it is impossible to re-establish a normal physiological state by means of a diet which would prevent or greatly delay the formation of liver cancer.

These dietary influences may prove to play a very large part in the causation, prevention and treatment of human cancer. Further research along these lines may prove quite profitable, especially in conjunction with studies of other factors. For example, it would be of interest to test the effect of estrogenic hormones in preventing liver cirrhosis in animals, in view of the fact that estrogens have a strong lipotropic action (György, '48).

The factors involved in the development of neoplastic cells, resulting from a combination of dietary deficiency and a carcinogenic substance, are not well understood. There is a possibility that lack of an essential dietary substance may serve as a stimulus to the development of a mutant form of cell with alternate metabolic pathways. Data presented in this paper indicate that the action of Butter Yellow in inducing liver tumors is enhanced by dietary deficiency.

Thus, because this biological system is one in which tumor growth can be partially controlled, and because the system offers normal as well as tumor tissue for comparison, further investigation on a biological level, particularly enzyme studies of the tissue and blood, is indicated. Through this type of approach an understanding of the factors determining tumor growth should be gained.

Manuscript received 10 February 1951.