Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to M Abercrombie.
The role of contact inhibition in influencing the behaviour of malignant cells is discussed in a review. Although tissue culture cannot simulate the immense complexity of the conditions in vivo, some of the distinctive features of malignant invasion can be conveniently observed with this technique. The evidence derived from this technique indicates that defective contact inhibition of movement of malignant cells does contribute to their invasiveness.
An investigation of the behaviour of cells of the mouse transplantable sarcoma S180 in culture by time-lapse cinematography has been made to determine how the spreading of a population from an explant is affected by contact reactions between the sarcoma cells; and how the invasion of a fibroblast population is affected by contact reactions with the fibroblasts. Although the sarcoma cells show a form of contact inhibition to each other, this has little influence on the spreading of a population, which is brought about very largely by diffusive movement, in sharp contrast to the spreading of a fibroblast population. The invasion of a fibroblast population by S180 cells takes place as a consequence of defective contact inhibition; though contact inhibition (but not contact paralysis) of the S180 cells has an appreciable incidence. During invasion the S180 cells, though moving on the exposed surfaces of the fibroblasts, may be largely using the collagen substratum between the fibroblasts for their locomotion. The arrangement of the fibroblasts produces some degree of contact guidance of the sarcoma cells.
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The mutual invasion in culture of a population of standard fibroblasts (chick embryo) and a population of cells from a transplantable mouse sarcoma (MC)M, BAS/56, or 311) or of neontal mouse fibroblasts has been estimated quantitatively. We arranged the confrontation of the pairs of populations by placing primary explants near each other. After fixation, the distance the cells had migrated from each explant was sampled in the space between the explants where they met and at the sides of the explants where they migrated freely. Measurements of nuclear overlap and orientation were also made. In the sarcoma as in the fibroblast population, homologous contact inhibition of movement probably produced an oriented migration from the explants before the populations met. Abot 12-24 hours after, mutual invasion was considerably greater in the sarcoma versus fibroblast than in the fibroblast versus fibroblast experiments. It is proposed that this difference was due to a difference of heterologous contact inhibition in the two types of experiment.
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