Malignant lymphomas following allogenic disease: transition from an immunological to a neoplastic disorder.

The graft versus host reaction which occurs in F(1) hybrid mice injected with parental spleen cells was used to examine several immunological theories of neoplasia. Long-term survivors of this reaction developed lymphoid neoplasms which resembled Hodgkin's disease and lymphosarcoma. Mice with these tumors were chimeras, but the parental cells present within their spleens had specific immunological tolerance toward host antigens. This, together with the finding that the tumors were transplantable only to isogenic recipients, indicates that the tumors were of host rather than donor origin.