Gland Grafts

Johns Hopkins' Professor Harvey Brinton Stone was cautiously vague last winter when he let it be known that he was successfully transplanting human thyroid and parathyroid tissue by new methods (TIME, Dec. 18). More sure of his methods this year, Professor Stone has been publishing the details of this difficult surgical procedure in the Annals of Surgery. By last week, when he was asked to tell the American College of Surgeons (see p. 35) what he was doing, he had achieved sufficient boldness to pack his whole story into a few simple sentences. Said he:

"Under strict surgical asepsis throughout, tissue is removed from the donor, minced carefully into tiny fragments, 1 to 1.5 mm. in diameter, and planted on a coagulated medium such as is used for tissue culture.

After a day or two of observation to insure that the cultures are alive and not contaminated, they are transferred to new medium containing serum and plasma derived from the intended recipient of the graft. On this medium they are grown for a period of two to four weeks, being transferred to fresh medium as often as seems desirable.

When ready for grafting, a small incision is made through the skin of the recipient, at the axilla or groin, and a pocket pushed open by blunt dissection in the areolar tissue near the large blood vessels. The various fragments of graft are picked up on a pipette containing salt solution, squirted into the pocket, and the small incision sutured. If the grafts take, they grow slowly in size and after a number of weeks or months restore the physiology of the recipient to normal."

Thus a person with an underactive thyroid need not take thyroxin the rest of his life. Nor need one with a deficient parathyroid forever take calcium-bearing drugs to ward off spasms. If Professor Stone can extend his system of culturing minced glands to include the pancreas and the adrenals, he indicated last week, surgeons would have a simple, permanent cure for diabetes and Addison's disease. But, warned the able doctor: "No type or method of grafting can reasonably be expected to yield 100% successful results."

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