ABSTRACT
Thirty years ago teratocarcinomas were little more than pathological oddities, of passing interest to some oncologists but quite unknown to most biologists. Their emergence from obscurity was largely due to the work of Roy Stevens and Barry Pierce who, between them, gradually impressed on their audiences the special features of these obscure tumours. At a gross level, there was something immediately fascinating in the monstrous form of some teratocarcinomas, the jumble of hair and teeth, skin and brain tissue, intestine and skeletal elements all chaotically cohabiting in a single tumour. But it was the ‘life cycle’ of teratocarcinomas that was especially intriguing, particularly in the context of the major advances in manipulating early mammalian embryos which occurred in the 1960s.
