Spontaneous and chemically induced transformation of rat embryo cell cultures

The transformation of Wistar rat embryo cells in vitro has been studied in passaged cultures using two criteria for transformation: (1) the ability of cells to form colonies in soft agar and (2) the ability of cells to form tumours in young syngeneic animals. In general there was good correlation between the two criteria. Spontaneous transformation was observed in all untreated cultures by 44 weeks although, by not allowing the cells to become confluent, the tendency was for cultures to transform earlier (i.e. 15-21 weeks). It was noticeable that despite untreated cultures having been in vitro for different lengths of time, most cultures transformed after a similar number of passages (42-50). Treatment of the embryo cells with the alkylating agent nitrosomethylurea (NMU) or benzo(alpha)pyrene (BP) sometimes resulted in transformation after a shorter period in vitro than the controls (minimum 12 weeks) although some treated cultures took longer. Transformed cells produced transplantable fibrosarcomata in syngeneic hosts and those arising from NMU transformed cells were histologically different from those arising from spontaneously transformed cells. The significant of spontaneous transformation in in vitro rat cell transformation systems is discussed.