ABSTRACT
Recognition of the inflammatory disease that precedes and is intercurrent with the development of colonic carcinoma has expanded the potential importance of the cotton-top tamarin in biomedical research. As in the development of human colon cancer, genetic factors would appear important in species susceptibility as well as apparent species resistance. Investigators in several colonies have produced data that incriminate the colitic episodes as predisposing the cotton-top tamarin colon to the neoplastic process in the cotton-top tamarin. The study of death rates associated with certain diseases is quite interesting, but a difficult problem is posed in that we have no reliable methods to accurately predict the age of imported cotton-top tamarins. Changes in physiological and pathophysiological parameters continue to offer hope but no pathognomonic perturbation exists for either inflammatory bowel disease or colon cancer. The cotton-top tamarin may therefore be an invaluable model in the elucidation of mechanisms of carcinogenesis, cancer diagnosis, and cancer therapy.
