Multicellular tumour spheroids: a model for combined in vivo/in vitro assay of tumour immunity.

Multicellular tumour spheroids (MTS) from 4 mouse tumours (Line 1 lung carcinoma; a fibrosarcoma, FSA; a mammary carcinoma, MCa-11; and SV40-transformed fibroblasts, SV-A31) WEre injected into the abdominal cavity of normal, immunized or tumour-bearing syngeneic mice, recovered after 4-48 h, and their growth measured in vitro for 7-16 days. Both normal and immunized mice inhibited MTS growth, but there was no correlation between the two types of inhibition, suggesting that different immunological processes were involved. For example, the greatest inhibition by normal mice was seen for the weakly immunogenic MCa-11, and the highly immunogenic tumour, SV-A31, was only moderately inhibited. However, the summed inhibition of MTS growth in normal and sensitized hosts corresponded to the behaviour of tumours as s.c. transplants; i.e., was inversely related to the malignancy of the same tumours. The inhibition of MTS by mice bearing identical early tumours (FSA or MCa-11) was comparable to that in immunized mice. Histological sections of SV-A31 MTS in normal or immunized hosts revealed the infiltration of MTS by various types of host cells, mostly polymorphonuclears, macrophages and lymphocytes.