Genetic Analysis of a Sarcoma Accidentally Transplanted from a Patient to a Surgeon

Abstract

ODERN concepts of cancer immunology originated from the classic observations by Jensen, Loeb, Tyzzer, and Little in the ear-ly years of the 20th century of the rejection of trans-planted allogeneic tumors and the acceptance of syn-geneic tumors. 1 Despite this law of transplantation, there are several clinical examples of the accidental transplantation of a malignant tumor or tumor cells into a healthy recipient. 2-5 We describe the accidental transplantation of a malignant sarcoma from a patient to a surgeon. Us-ing molecular methods, we showed that the sarco-mas in the unrelated patient and surgeon were ge-netically identical.