Experimental metastasis of oncogene-transformed NIH 3T3 cells in chick embryo

By means of a highly sensitive and quantitative assay for specific detection of metastasized tumor cells in chick embryonic organs using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), we have examined the experimental metastatic ability of individual clones of NIH 3T3 cells, transformed with oncogenes: v-Ki-ras, v-Ha-ras, v-src, v-fos, and v-abl. Such a transformed clone had different metastatic abilities in different embryonic organs. Among them, two clones of NIH 3T3 cells transformed with ras-oncogenes (v-Ki-ras or v-Ha-ras) metastasized to liver and lungs of chick embryo, and grew there more rapidly than the other clones. The parental NIH 3T3 cells were detected as slight bands of PCR products after iv injection, indicating some cells were trapped in chick embryonic organs, but did not grow. These findings indicate that the transformed cells are able to invade the organ tissues and grow in embryonic chick organs, but non-metastatic cells such as the untransformed-NIH 3T3 cells are not able to grow in the secondary sites. These experiments clearly demonstrate the usefulness of this assay system to study genes involved in malignant transformation.