Tumor metastases and cell-mediated immunity in a model system in DBA/2 mice. VII. Interaction of metastasizing and nonmetastasizing tumors with normal tissue in vitro.

Three mouse tumors known to metastasize in vivo and 3 nonmetastasizing mouse tumors that grow only locally in vivo were examined for their ability to adhere to and invade normal syngeneic lung organ cultures in vitro. All 3 metastasizing tumors adhered to and invaded the normal lung cultures. In contrast, tumors that grow only locally in vivo neither adhered to nor invaded the normal lung tissue. The described system is ideally suited to correlate the in vivo invasiveness of a given tumor with its potential to metastasize in vivo and to study in vitro how to influence the interaction of metastasizing tumor cells with normal tissue.