Growth of HeLa cells in diffusion chamber cultures in vivo.

In order to investigate some characteristics of Millipore diffusion chamber cultures (DCC) and their potential for the quantitation of tumor cell growth kinetics, HeLa S-3-cells were grown in diffusion chambers implanted i.p. in mice. HeLa cells grew pseudologarithmically in DCC with a population-doubling time of approximately 2.8 days when 9.2 to 12.0 X 10(5) cells were placed in the chambers initially. The population-doubling time varied as a function of the initial innocula size but was always longer than the in vitro population-doubling time of 1.2 days. Comparable harvests of cells from experiment to experiment varied quantitatively by no more than a factor 1.8. This variaton somewhat limits the use of DCC for the quantitation of subtle effects. The fate and morphology of HeLa cells in DCC were determined from scanning electron microscopy. DCC might be exploited in clinical studies of the growth of patients' tumors and the effects of various therapies in a host-mediated system.