Influences of various substrata on morphology, motility, and invasiveness of rat tumour cells. I. Studies on the nonmetastatic variant BSp 73 AS.

BSp 73 AS is a highly invasive but scarcely metastatic cell line from a rat pancreatic adenocarcinoma. In vitro the AS-cells flatten and move actively and were originally able to form monolayers. Our highly passaged AS-cells had lost this ability and formed only two-dimensional clusters and small aggregates on plastic or glass supports. The in vitro behaviour of the As-cells, however, could be dramatically modified by biomatrices like collagen type I/III (vitrogen), Iaminin, fibronectin, basement membrane matrigel, lens capsule and bovine corneal endothelial basal lamina. On these substrata the AS-cells in most cases showed both faster and stronger attachment as well as spreading. Furthermore, degradation, alteration and penetration of the materials could be observed as well as filopodial outgrowth, secretion of membrane vesicles, modification of the cell shape and the forming of monolayers. Shaking the culture dishes decreased the attachment of the AS-cells to laminin, fibronectin and matrigel. Generally, the nonmetastatic AS-cells exhibited a rather aggressive activity in vitro. It could also be demonstrated that not only the cells alter the substratum, but also the cell phenotype is influenced by the extracellular components with which they were confronted.