[Transmission and expression of malignancy in somatic hybrid cell lines (hamster/hamster, mouse/mouse,...

Various characteristics of transformation were studied in subclones isolated from a hybrid cell line obtained by fusion of two Chinese hamster sub-lines having the same origin but presenting different properties, particularly in respect to heterotransplantability. Different subclones were obtained by cloning on semisoft agar. Transplantability, plating efficiency, agglutinability by concanavalin A and actinomycin D resistance were studied in parallel with the evolution of the karyotype to try to find a correlation between these various parameters. A relationship seems to exist between a chromosome marker arising in the hybrid and the percentage of tumours. The second part of this work dealth with the study of intra and interspecies hybrids, one of the parents of which was a normal, fibroblastic cell and the other of which contained the polyoma virus genome. In the hybrid cell this viral genome was expressed at several levels. Firstly, in the formation of specific polyoma virus-induced antigens and secondaryly, in surface properties normally considered related to the expression of tumorigenicity. Nevertheless, tumour development was repressed. Though the presence of characteristic antigens seemed necessary for the expression of malignant transformation, presence alone was not sufficient to induce malignant transformation of the cell. The study of inter-species mouse/hamster hybrids showed that this situation is not general. For this we examined the properties of hybrid cells between, on the one hand, a mouse tumorigenic cell bearing polyoma virus genetic information and, on the other, non-tumorigenic mouse or hamster cell. In this case the complete hamster genome could bot repress malignancy whereas a few mouse chromosomes sufficed to code for the expression of virus-induced tumour antigens and various malignant properties. It may be hoped that these hybrids could be used to pin-point the chromosome localization of the genetic factors of malignancy and could be used in immunoprotection studies or immunotherapy research.