Altered adhesiveness of tumor cell surface variants with reduced metastasizing capacity – reduced adhesiveness to vascular wall components in culture

Abstract

Heterotypic adhesiveness of surface variant clones of B‐16 melanoma cells exibiting different metastasizing capacity was studied with respect to components of the vascular wall in culture including endothelial (E) and smooth muscle (SM) cells from adult bovine aorta, and the extracellular matrices laid down by them. The ricinresistant cells (ricin^R) and the wheat‐germ agglutininresistant (WGA^R) cells, both of which showed reduced hematogenous metastases in vivo, showed reduced adhesiveness specifically to endothelial cells and extracellular matrices. This reduced heterotypic adhesiveness is in contrast to the homotypic adhesive properties in which respect the ricin^R cells had similar values to the parental cells, while the WGA^R cells had much higher values than the latter. There appeared to be a positive correlation between metastasizing capacity and specific adhesiveness to E cells and the extracellular matrix surfaces.