A Rapid Method for studying Tumour Blood Supply using Lissamine Green

Abstract

Goldacre and Sylvén¹ have described a method for making visible those regions of solid malignant tumours supplied with flowing blood. They used a high blood concentration of the triphenylmethane dye, lissamine green (Gurr), which turned the whole animal green except where there were barriers. Ten to twelve days following the transplantation of sarcoma 37, mammary carcinoma and Erhlich Landschütz tumours in mice and Walker sarcoma in rats it was observed that vascular obstruction occurred, confining the flowing blood to a thin surface layer of the tumour. Tumours measuring 1–3 cm. across had a white centre and a green periphery. The dye does not penetrate the living cell membrane but the surrounding tissues become green due to the green blood in them and the green interstitial fluid derived from the blood. Extensive regions not supplied with flowing blood but with a thin coating layer supplied with blood were also found in various large spontaneous and methylcholanthrene-induced tumours of rodents. Cells dissected out from the non-coloured tumour region were found to be dead except when within about 300µ from the green region, where mixtures of living and dead cells were found.