Ultrastructural comparison between cultured and tumor cells of human malignant melanoma.

Tumor cells from 28 human malignant melanomas were compared by electron microscopy with cultured cells of 17 established human melanoma cell lines derived from the same types of tumors. Both tumor and cultured cells were classified into five types according to their different fine-structural characteristics. There was a correlation between the cell types observed in the tumor fragments and in the cell lines. This evidence suggests that cultured human melanoma cells retained in vitro the characteristics of the melanoma cells in vivo, from which they were derived.