Saturation density of skin fibroblasts as a quantitative screen for human cancer susceptibility.

Genomic analysis of human cancers reveals a large number of genetic changes per cell that presumably underlie development of the disease. The complexity of these changes that differ from one type of cancer to the other and from patient to patient with the same type of cancer raises questions about the feasibility of genomic analysis as an indicator of susceptibility to cancer. However, skin fibroblasts (SF) from individuals in families with heritable forms of cancer, and from cancer-bearing individuals, show correlation with a significant increase in saturation density (SD), as well as other neoplasia-related properties. Procedures are described for amplifying and quantifying differences in SD on the basis of studies of spontaneous transformation in the NIH 3T3 line of mouse fibroblasts. It is proposed that such procedures be evaluated as quantitative screens for susceptibility to cancer in the general population.