Studies on the uptake of 2-deoxy-d-glucose in normal and malignant rat epithelial liver cells in culture.

The rate of uptake of 2-deoxyglucose in normal rat hepatic cells and chemically induced hepatoma cells in culture was studied. The hepatoma cells possessed a higher permeability to the sugar at all stages of culture. However, a decrease in the uptake of 2-deoxyglucose at confluency was observed in cells which exhibited density-dependent inhibition of growth, whether normal or malignant. The normal cells in mitosis showed an increased permeability to the sugar, whereas no such change was observed in the hepatoma cells. The kinetic studies of 2-deoxyglucose transport in normal and transformed rat liver showed a positive correlation between the increase in Vmax and the transformed state of the cells, whether they were transformed in vitro or in vivo. No changes in the apparent Km were found, indicating that there are no qualitative changes in the transport sites. The results suggest that an increase in the number of sites involved in glucose transport is a characteristic of chemically transformed rat liver epithelial cells.