Carcinogenesis in tissue culture 30: malignant transformation of normal rat liver cells treated with diethylnitrosamine in tissue culture with special reference to the differential effects of cytochalasin B on various cells with and without tumorigenicity.

Liver tissue of a suckling rat was cultured. After 3 weeks of cultivation, the cultures consisting of epithelial cells were treated with 50 micrograms/ml or 100 micrograms/ml DEN for 7 days. 5 months after the treatment, the mode of chromosome number was found decreased from 42 to 40 in the 100 micrograms/ml DEN-treated group and shifted to triploid range after 21 months. The mode in the 50 micrograms/ml DEN-treated group maintained the diploid number until the 5th month but was found reduced to 40 in 21 months. On subcutaneous backtransplantation into young rats at the 22nd month, the treated cells produced tumors at the site inoculated in all the rats. Metastatic foci were also detected in lungs. These tumors were histologically diagnosed as hepatomas. Untreated control cells did not produce tumors. The differential effects of cytochalasine B on the cells with and without tumorigenicity were examined by the use of these cells and other cells, and it revealed that the capacity of multinucleated cell-formation by cytochalasin B fairly corresponds with the backtransplantability of the cells. Binucleated cell formation, not more than 2 nuclei, in the culture of normal cells was found by time-lapse cinemicrography to be not due to the non-capacity of multinucleation but to the destruction of multinucleated cells.