Lectin agglutinability of mammary tumours with differing metastatic colonisation potentials

A new fully quantitative method for assessment of lectin agglutinability has been used in this investigation to compare the surface composition of cells from tumours with high and low pulmonary colonisation potential. As in our previous work, we have used only primary (i.e., naturally-occurring) mammary tumours in mice. It was found that agglutinability with the lectins Concanavalin-A and Wheatgerm agglutinin bore no relationship to the pulmonary colonisation potential of the primary mammary tumour. However, cells from disaggregated secondary deposits of tumours which manifested high colonisation potential were consistently less agglutinable than the cells of the primary tumours from which they were derived.