Cimetidine and therapy of rodent tumours

Our plain-English summary of Cimetidine and therapy of rodent tumours, by D. Hannant, K. James, R.E. Bolton, et al (British Journal of Cancer, 1982).

The study

• Authors: D. Hannant, K. James, R.E. Bolton, M.D. Robertson, I. Milne
• Journal: British Journal of Cancer
• Published: 1982;45(4):613-4
• Cited by: 7 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher · Free full text

In plain English

This short communication from Edinburgh described laboratory animal experiments testing whether the stomach drug cimetidine, given in drinking water, slowed the growth of transplanted tumours. Earlier reports by other researchers had suggested it could. Male WAG/Ed rats were injected under the skin with cells of an asbestos-induced mesothelioma called MF3. CBA/Ca mice were injected with cells of a chemically induced fibrosarcoma called CCH1. Treated animals received cimetidine at 100 mg/kg/day from the day of inoculation, and control animals drank plain water. Cimetidine had no observable effect on how many animals developed tumours or how large they grew. In each mouse group 10 of 10 animals had tumours, and in each rat group 5 of 8. Doses up to 200 mg/kg/day also had no observable effect on CCH1, though those results were not presented. In test-tube work, cimetidine reduced histamine binding to rat spleen cells, showing that it acted on its target receptors. The authors concluded that further studies were necessary before any decision on clinical use. They noted that the assumption that animals in a cage drank similar amounts was not entirely satisfactory.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Animal experiment (short communication), with an accompanying laboratory (in vitro) test on rat spleen cells
• Who was studied: Male syngeneic WAG/Ed rats (a Wistar strain from the Edinburgh University Centre for Laboratory Animals), 8 per group according to the table, and syngeneic CBA/Ca mice, 10 per group according to the table; 4 to 5 animals per cage; Institute of Occupational Medicine and University of Edinburgh
• Exposure: Oral cimetidine (an H-2 antagonist) in drinking water at 100 mg/kg/day from the day of tumour inoculation. Rats were injected under the skin with cells of the asbestos-induced mesothelioma MF3 (the article does not name the fiber type); mice were injected with cells of the 3-methylcholanthrene-induced fibrosarcoma CCH1. Controls received unadulterated water.
• Main results:
  • At the cimetidine dose used, there was no observable effect on the incidence or size of tumours in either the rat (mesothelioma MF3) or mouse (fibrosarcoma CCH1) models
  • Animals with tumour: CCH1 control mice 10/10, CCH1 cimetidine mice 10/10, MF3 control rats 5/8, MF3 cimetidine rats 5/8
  • Mean tumour diameter (mm plus or minus s.d.): CCH1 control 20.7 plus or minus 2.6; CCH1 cimetidine 19.75 plus or minus 2.9; MF3 control 23.2 plus or minus 3.0; MF3 cimetidine 23.7 (the standard deviation is illegible in the scanned text)
  • No difference in tumour growth rates was observed between cimetidine-treated and control groups
  • In other studies with CCH1 (results not presented), cimetidine doses up to 200 mg/kg/day also had no observable effect
  • In vitro, histamine bound specifically to 33.9 plus or minus 8.8% (mean plus or minus s.d.) of normal WAG/Ed rat spleen cells. Pretreating the cells with cimetidine (10 to the minus 3 molar, 1 hour at 37°C) reduced this to 12.1 plus or minus 2.7%.
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that cimetidine may not have universal application in tumour therapy, that antitumour effects in tumour-bearing rats have yet to be demonstrated, and that further studies are necessary before any decision on its suitability for clinical use
• Limitations the authors state:
  • Dosing assumed that each animal in a cage drank a similar amount of water; the authors described this assumption as not entirely satisfactory
  • The authors used a different mouse strain from the earlier study they compared with, which they said might have had some effect

Related studies

• Imaging in vivo herpes simplex virus thymidine kinase gene transfer to tumour-bearing rodents using positron emission tomography and — R. Hustinx, C.Y. Shiue, et al. (2001)
• Use of protamine to augment adenovirus-mediated cancer gene therapy — M. Lanuti, C.E. Kouri, et al. (1999)
• Tumour initiation by natural and contaminating asbestos oils — F.J. Roe, M.A. Walters, et al. (1966)
• Cariporide Enhances the DNA Damage and Apoptosis in Acid-tolerable Malignant Mesothelioma H-2452 Cells — Y.J. Lee, J.H. Bae, et al. (2017)
• Treatment of transplanted rat tumours with double-stranded RNA(BRL 5907). II. Treatment of pleural and peritoneal growths — M.V. Pimm, R.W. Baldwin (1976)
• Failure to demonstrate tumour-associated transplantation antigens on asbestos-induced mesotheliomas in rats — D.G. Brown, J.C. Wagner, et al. (1980)

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