The demonstration of specific carcino-embryonic antigens common to malignant adult and normal foetal tissues of the human digestive system.

The established importance of cancer as a cause of human mortality has stimulated the development of a vast field of cancer research or oncology. The techniques and concepts which have been employed in attempts to gain a better understanding of malignant tumour transformation have come from almost every branch of the biological and biophysical sciences. In recent years the rapidly changing discipline of immunology has served as a ready source of new ideas for application to the problems of oncology. The present thesis represents a further attempt to utilize immunological techniques for the study of biological mechanisms underlying the development of cancer in the human host. [...