1974 Articles

The Cell Surface and Malignant Transformation

Pollack, Robert; Hough, P V C

A malignant cell has lost many restrictions to which normal cells are subjected. For example, cell division is no longer tightly regulated by cell-cell contact or specific serum factors, serum-mediated hormonal feedback loops are broken, and cell recognition of neighboring cells no longer leads to maintenance of cell position.

As such differences (Table 1) between normal and malignant cells are described in ever greater detail, mechanisms to explain how the cell maintains any or all of them have remained sorely lacking.

Very recently, different laboratories working on widely different biological systems have reported a series of experiments (1-7) which, taken together, begin to suggest possible mechanisms for the maintenance of the transformed state. Most of these new lines of research have directly involved experiments on the surfaces of normal and malignant cells.

In this review we have attempted to make explicit some implied connections among the results of these laboratories. Our hope is that our admittedly premature synthesis might be predictive, and so stimulate some new critical experiments.