(7 of 9)
Search the Soil. One of the most interesting programs at Sloan-Kettering is concerned not with the cancer cells, but the "soil" (as Dr. Rhoads calls it) in which they grow. Normal human cells often look startlingly like small, one-celled animals. But they are not free agents. Their growth is controlled and limited by the hormones in the blood. The most important hormones come from the gonads (testes and ovaries) and from the adrenals (small glands attached to the kidneys).
It has been known for a long time that the steroid hormones (socalled because they contain the "steroid" nucleus in common) are closely connected with cancer. The administration of sex hormones can both cause and prevent certain cancers in mice. Some cancer researchers hold to the theory that a complete understanding of the steroid hormones might tell why cancer occurs, how to cure it, perhaps even how to prevent it. The difficulty is that there are a great many steroid hormones. Their study requires such special methods and special apparatus that steroid work has become a recognized sub-subdivision of biochemistry. At Sloan-Kettering the experts in this mysterious field sit together at luncheon, speaking a special language.
Leading steroid man at Sloan-Kettering is short, round, German-born Dr. Konrad Dobriner. The raw material of his science is human urine, in which are found steroid "metabolites" (breakdown products from the hormones that the body has used and passed on). Dobriner's assistants collect urine for months or even years from the people they intend to study. They extract the steroids by a long series of tedious techniques, and identify them by their characteristic absorption of infrared light.
Glandular Orchestra. Dobriner has already achieved startling results. The urine of each person has a different steroid pattern, but in healthy, normal males & females there is a general similarity. In cancer patients, however, there is a striking difference. A new steroid, 11 hydroxy-etiocholanolone, almost always absent in healthy persons, shows up in about two out of three cancer patients.
A remarkable discovery came when a woman from whom Dobriner had been collecting urine for several years suddenly developed cancer of the breast. Dobriner found, on examining the stored extract from her urine, that she had been excreting the uncommon steroid for at least three years before her cancer developed. The tumor was removed surgically and the woman is now apparently in perfect health. But she still excretes the cancer-pointing steroid.
It looks to Dobriner as if the presence of the uncommon steroid may indicate not only cancer but sometimes an abnormal hormone situation that leads to development of cancer. "The endocrine system," he says, "consists of a number of glands that should be in harmony, like a symphony orchestra. We want to prove that in cancer the orchestra is haywire."