Selective adhesion and impaired adhesive properties of transformed cells.

Quantitative studies on the adhesive properties of transformed cells have yielded inconclusive and sometimes contradictory results. The present investigation has examined adhesive interactions between normal human fibroblasts, established as well as virus-transformed animal cell lines, and human tumour-derived cell lines by the cell-cell layer binding assay. The results of these investigations indicate that adhesive selectivity can be observed between normal human fibroblasts and 2 human tumour-derived cell lines, providing an in vitro system to study cell surface components involved in cellular interactions between normal and malignant cells. In addition it is demonstrated that cell layers of transformed cells form a poorly adhesive substratum for both trypsinized normal and transformed cells. Furthermore, it is confirmed that the adhesive properties of transformed cells, including adhesive selectivity, are affected by the dissociation procedure (trypsin or EDTA). In view of the observations made by other investigators, the present results suggest that transformed cells display adhesive properties which can be quantitatively and reproducibly measured but which are modulated by the dissociation procedure as well as by the configuration in which the cells are at the time of the assay.