Plasminogen activator induction and platelet aggregation by phorbol and some of its derivatives: correlation with skin irritancy and tumor-promoting activity.

Phorbol and eight of its derivatives were investigated for their ability to stimulate the synthesis of the enzyme plasminogen activator in cultured chick embryo fibroblasts and to aggregate human blood platelets and have been assayed for tumor, promoting and skin, irritant activities. Over a range of concentrations, elevation in the levels of plasminogen activator activity induced by phorbol derivatives correlates well with their promoting and irritant properties. In the platelet aggregation assay however, the parallelism between the activities measured in different biological assays was less complete. While strong promoters, such as TPA, are potent aggregating agents, and weak promoters, such as PDA, are poor or ineffective inducers of aggregation, two derivatives, PDD and PDB, deviate from this general result. Platelets must be exposed to PDD in relatively high concentrations before they will aggregate, and PDB was found to be the most potent aggregating agent of all the derivatives tested.