Primary neoplastic transformation in vivo of xenogeneic skin grafts on nude mice.

Rabbit skin was infected with Shope papilloma virus and grafted orthotopically to nude mice. Typical Shope rabbit papillomas developed in most of the grafts, but similarly treated nude mouse skin grafts were not altered. These results demonstrated that xenogeneic tissues retained susceptibility to oncogenic agents after transplantation to nude mice. The results also implied that it should be feasible to study carcinogenesis of human tissues in this system.