Tissue culture study of a sacrococcygeal chordoma with further ultrastructural study.

This report concerns an electron microscopic study of a sacrococcygeal chordoma and its in vitro cultured cells. In vitro, the cells that proliferated in the early phase were predominantly non-vacuolated stellate cells, which were later transformed into vacuolated cells. This suggests that various cell types seen in vivo represent variants of the same cell type at different stages of differentiation and cellular activity. The in vitro tumor cells also show the origin of their vacuoles from both rough endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi membranes. The finding of amorphous and granular material and collagen fibrils in the extracellular spaces of cultured cells seems to suggest that chordoma cells have certain synthetic and secretory activity.