Production of plasminogen activator and inhibition of embryonic cell aggregation by cultured human normal and neoplastic cells.

The plasminogen activator (PA) production and the capacity to inhibit embryonic neural retina (NR) cell aggregation by human normal and neoplastic cell lines have been studied. The PA production was detected by both iodinated fibrin and casein lysis assays, and by changes in cell morphology at the presence of activated PA, using dog serum. Since the casein lysis assay and morphological changes proved to be less sensitive than 125I-fibrin lysis assay, a good correlation between these three assays could be observed provided that PA production measured by fibrinolysis exceeded 10--20%. The neoplastic cell lines exhibited the PA production to quite a large extent. The highest fibrinolytic activity (78%) was found in the case of bladder carcinoma cells T24, while the B-5GT cells from giant cell tumor of bone failed to produce any detectable amount of the PA. The cells from synovial sarcoma and both glioma lines exhibited fibrinolytic activity of about 10% and four sarcoma cell lines over the range 20--50%. Out of 13 normal cell lines tested, 7 were negative or exhibited very low fibrinolysis not exceeding 3% of total radioactivity. Four cell lines derived from kidneys, lungs, intestines, and from mixed embryonic tissues showed a marked fibrinolytic activity of about 10--37%, a slightly elevated fibrinolysis being found in embryonic lung cells LEP and cells from fetal skin tissue only at the presence of dog serum. The fibrinolysis detected in the neoplastic cloned cell populations showed considerable differences in the PA production between individual cell clones isolated from the same parental cell line. Unlike the normal fibroblastic cells B-41FB derived from bone, all neoplastic cell lines tested possess the capability to inhibit embryonic NR cell aggregation significantly. The results suggest the effect not to be dependent upon the PA production.