Interplantation

INTERPLANTATION, the cultivation of tissues in vivo; this term in recent experimental biology designates, according to Durken, a type of transplantation (implantation) in which material (usually embryonic) is transplanted into the cavities of the body: into the orbit (after preliminary removal of the eye), into the abdominal cavity, into the lymphatic sac, etc., which is most often done for the isolation and cultivation of parts of the embryo in relatively indifferent conditions, while excluding as much as possible the inducing-acting external factors (Durken, Holtfreter, Mangold, etc.). What is obtained are as it were in vivo cultures, intra vitam explants. Originally, according to Roux and Oppel, interplantation was understood as such a transplantation when the transplant itself gradually died and was replaced by the tissue of the host organism, playing only a temporary role as an 'interplant'. In recent times, the term interplantation has come to be understood in a somewhat different sense and is applied in all cases where, as indicated above, complete fusion with the host body does not occur and the transplant remains more or less isolated. Various authors have studied by means of interplantation the growth and development of various parts of the embryo, isolated at different phases of development, tissue differentiation, etc. (Durken, Belogolovy, Holtfreter, etc.), and in some cases Durken and others observed tumor-like (sarcoma-like) growth. As a special type of interplantation can be considered the transplants obtained by Krontovsky's method (usually from tumors), isolated from other parts of the body by an artificial (rubber) capsule: tumors isolated by this method are connected to the organism by an artery and vein, which makes it possible to study their metabolism by means of anastomosis or, by introducing cannulas into the artery and vein, to isolate tumors outside the organism.