Gonadotropin Produced by a Microorganism

Production of a factor resembling chorionic gonadotropin (CG) by a microorganism named Progenitor cryptocides was reported by Livingston and Livingston (1974) and Cohen and Strampp (1976). The factor was tentatively identified as a CG-like substance based on hemagglutination inhibition assay, radioimmunoassay (RIA), and radio-receptor assay (RRA) methods. Recently, with use of immunocytochemical techniques, Acevedo and associates (1978, 1979) and Slifkin et al. (1979) demonstrated that CG-like immunoreactive substance is present in the cell wall of several microorganisms which were isolated from patients bearing malignant neoplasms. Furthermore, Richert and Ryan (1977a) reported that the media in which Pseudomonas maltophilia were cultured may contain a protein which cross-reacts with antisera to hCG and hCGB. Other microorganisms which were reported to produce or contain CG-like factor are Escherichia Coli (Cohen and Strampp, 1976), Staphylococcus epidermidis (Affronti et al., 1977a, b; Affronti and Charoenvit, 1979) and Staphylococcus faecalis (Koide et al., 1979).