Prediction of metastatic potential of aspirated cells from the Dunning R-3327 prostatic adenocarcinoma model.

Pathological grading systems have failed to assess accurately the prognosis of patients with prostatic carcinoma. A visual grading system of cancer cell motility has described successfully the metastatic potential of sublines of the Dunning R-3327 rat prostatic adenocarcinoma model maintained in vitro and in vivo. Clinical application of this technique would be facilitated if it could be performed upon aspirated cells. We compared the motility of cells obtained by biopsy and fine needle aspiration from in vivo Dunning tumors and determined if the motility of aspirated cells could predict metastatic potential. Specimens from the same tumor were obtained by fine needle aspiration and incisional biopsy from three sublines of low (less than 10%) and three sublines of high (greater than 90%) metastatic potential. Membrane ruffling, pseudopodal extension and cellular translation of 100 cells were graded using time-lapse videomicroscopy. Cells obtained by biopsy and aspiration had similar average (analysis of variance, p greater than 0.7) and variation (coefficient of variation, aspirated = 18.6%, biopsy = 17.7%) of motility. Aspirated cells from three low metastatic sublines (membrane ruffling 5.20 +/- SEM 0.41, pseudopodal extension 4.10 +/- 0.57 and cellular translation 3.07 +/- 0.45) were distinguished from cells of three high metastatic sublines (membrane ruffling 7.10 +/- 0.15, pseudopodal extension 6.93 +/- 0.22 and cellular translation 5.47 +/- 0.25). Cellular translation, the best discriminator, correctly classified the metastatic potential of the subline of origin in 82% of 60 individual cells. A grading system based upon the motility of aspirated cancer cells should be studied in human prostatic carcinoma.