Medicine: Cancer in Russia

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In Soviet Russia, as in the U.S., cancer stands near the head of the list of killers.* Some 70,000 Soviet citizens die each year of gastric cancer alone (in the U.S.: 80,000). By Mayo Clinic standards, the Russians concede that Russian cancer treatment is backward: Russian doctors are less skillful in diagnosis, have three times as many deaths after operation (23%) and less than half as many five-year "cures" (no recurrence) of gastric cancer (12-14%). But the U.S.S.R. is pushing cancer research in twelve cancer institutes and in many hospitals, has made cancer-fighting its No. i public health project. Its researchers have found promising leads toward diagnosis and cure.

Last week, in the American Review of Soviet Medicine and at a Manhattan symposium held by the American-Soviet Medical Society, Soviet scientists presented a detailed roundup of their cancer work.

KR Progress. The most hopeful Russian lead is the KR treatment developed by the University of Moscow's Dr. Grigori Roskin and wife Nina Klyueva (TIME, July 8). Roskin and Klyueva reported that it had been tested on 18 "incurable" cancer patients, had destroyed tumors in eleven of the 18.

KR (for its discoverers' initials) is derived from Schizatrypanum cruzi, a South American trypanosome that has an affinity for cancer cells. When injected into cancerous mice, it gradually dissolves their tumors, but also kills the mice. Roskin & Klyueva developed a toxin from killed trypanosomes that dissolved cancer cells but was harmless to healthy cells. The cancer-destroying element, they concluded, was not the trypanosome itself but a toxin which it secreted. The toxin has proved safe for human patients.

Following up this lead, the two Russian researchers tried other toxins. Two—diphtheria and tetanus—seemed to work. Tested on cancerous mice, tetanus toxin checked or reduced tumors in half the cases. Diphtheria toxin did even better: out of 65 mice with cancers, it cured 39, stopped tumor growth in 19. Unlike KR, the toxins have still to be tested on humans. U.S. researchers, fascinated but uncertain, are pursuing experiments along similar lines.

Diagnosis. In cancer, early diagnosis is almost as important as treatment. Roskin has been working on that problem, too, last week reported progress.

Cancer researchers have looked long for a specific poison secreted by cancer cells. If such a substance could be detected in a cancer patient's blood, early diagnosis should be easy. Roskin started by testing the effect of serum from cancerous mice on the sensitive paramecium, a single-celled protozoan.* The serum had no effect. But when it was inactivated by freezing, and then mixed in carefully measured proportions with healthy guinea-pig serum, the mixture developed a toxic factor which killed paramecia.

Roskin proceeded to test the serum of cancerous rabbits, then of human patients, found to his delight that when properly prepared, it was highly toxic to paramecia. No other serum, not even that from patients with benign tumors, produced the same effect. The paramecia-killing power of serum from animals with implanted cancer varied with the type of cancer. A cancer can sometimes be detected two days after it is implanted, before any visible tumor has developed.