In vitro characteristics of metastatic variant subclones of restricted genetic origin.

We have studied several metastatic variant cell lines derived from a common clonal origin and their transformed and untransformed parental cell lines. A number of in vitro characteristics were examined for each tumor line and these properties were correlated with the ability of the tumor cells to form pulmonary nodules in an experimental metastasis assay. Direct correlations with metastatic behavior in the lung colony assay were found to exist with the amount of cell-bound Concanavalin A and the procoagulant activities of cell lysates. In vitro parameters that did not correlate with the metastatic phenotype were: population doubling times in culture, saturation density achieved in culture, the number of colony-forming cells shed from confluent cultures, rates of cellular attachment to homotypic or heterotypic cell monolayers, plasminogen-activator production and procoagulant activity produced in serum-free conditioned medium.