Comparison of procoagulant activities in extracts of normal and malignant human tissue

Cancer procoagulant A (CPA) was originally described in extracts of tumor tissue, but whether this represented a quantitative and/or a qualitative difference from procoagulant activity in normal tissue extracts was not clear. Procoagulant activity was quantitated in extracts of 12 matched normal and malignant human tissue samples from the large intestine, breast, lung, and kidney. The specific activity of procoagulants in the tumor extracts was not greater than that in the extracts of normal tissue. Two enzymatic characteristics of CPA that distinguish it from tissue thromboplastin are its inhibition by diisopropylfluorophosphate (DFP) and its lack of dependence on factor VII. These specific tests were used to evaluate qualitative differences between procoagulants from normal and malignant intestinal tissues. In the paired normal and malignant tissue extracts, all tumor samples were inhibited by DFP and were active in factor VII-depleted bovine plasma (F7D-BP). In contrast, the extracts of normal tissue were insensitive to DFP and, except for one extract, were inactive in F7D-BP. Four of 9 other tumor extracts (44%) were positive for both of these tests for CPA, whereas the other 5 extracts were positive for only one of the two tests. The results suggest that extracts of normal and malignant tissues contained similar levels of procoagulant. However, malignant tissue contained a procoagulant enzymatically different from normal tissue thromboplastin. Furthermore, most of the malignant tissue extracts seemed to contain little or no thromboplastin.