Altered adhesiveness of tumor cell surface variants with reduced metastasizing capacity--reduced adhesiveness to vascular wall components in culture.

Heterotypic adhesiveness of surface variant clones of B-16 melanoma cells exhibiting different metastasizing capacity was studied with respect to components of the vascular wall in culture including endothelial (E) and smooth muscle (SM) cells from adult bovine aorta, and the extracellular matrices laid down by them. The ricin-resistant cells (ricinR) and the wheat-germ agglutinin-resistant (WGAR) cells, both of which showed reduced hematogenous metastases in vivo, showed reduced adhesiveness specifically to endothelial cells and extracellular matrices. This reduced heterotypic adhesiveness is in contrast to the homotypic adhesive properties in which respect the ricinR cells had similar values to the parental cells, while the WGAR cells had much higher values than the latter. There appeared to be a positive correlation between metastasizing capacity and specific adhesiveness to E cells and the extracellular matrix surfaces.