Suppression of wound healing in tumor bearing animals as a model for tumor-host interaction: mechanism of suppression.

Tumor wound healing was explored as a possible model for tumor-host interactions. Wound healing within tumors progressed normally through the hemorrhagic and inflammatory stages but failed at the mesenchymal ingrowth phase. Due to this failure of mesenchymal ingrowth, no significant collagen deposition could be detected within tumor wounds. Fluid collected from tumor wounds markedly altered fibroblast cytoskeletal structures and profoundly inhibited fibroblast proliferation and collagen synthesis. This suppression did not appear to be the direct consequence of tumor products, since tumor conditioned media enhanced fibroblast proliferation and had no effects on collagen synthesis and fibroblast cytoskeleton. Sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis of lysed fibroblasts demonstrated that two polypeptides (Mr 280,000 and 240,000) were induced in or adherent to fibroblasts exposed to fluid from the tumor wound but not in fibroblasts exposed to fluid obtained from wounds in normal tissue or tumor conditioned media. These findings suggest that tumor wound healing is a model for mesenchymal inhibition within tumors but that the inhibitors are not tumor derived products.