Cell population kinetics of fast- and slow-growing transplantable tumors derived from spontaneous mammary tumors of the DBA/2 Ha-DD mouse.

The proliferation kinetics of a fast-growing spontaneous mouse mammary tumor subline (SMT-F) and a slow-growing spontaneous mouse mammary tumor subline (SMT-S) tumor have been determined autoradiographically at 2 different stages of tumor growth. The length of the cell cycle and the growth fraction for SMT-F were 11.2 hr and 0.85, respectively, on Day 14 and 12.1 hr and 0.78 on Day 28. For SMT-S these same parameters were 15.6 hr and 0.50 on Day 14 and 16. 1 hr and 0.45 on Day 28. On Days 14 and 28 the mitotic indices were 1.3 and 1.0%, respectively, for SMT-S, compared to 2.2 and 1.9% for SMT-F. The cell loss rate, cell loss factor, and cell loss were significantly higher for SMT-F than for SMT-S. The difference in the growth rates for these 2 tumor lines was attributable to a slight prolongation of the length of the cell cycle and a reduction in the growth fraction of SMT-S.