The behaviour of liposarcoma in tissue culture. A specific growth pattern

There have been few studies of liposarcoma in tissue culture. We report a study of 27 cases of liposarcoma including examples of all subtypes in tissue culture. All the cases showed a uniform growth pattern of glass adherence by polygonal cells with short processes distributed in a random fashion. The cytoplasm of these cells became progressively loaded with glycogen followed by lipid droplets. These lipid droplets tended to fuse progressively to form a single or dominant vacuole. At the same time, the cells tended to adopt a rounded shape. This pattern of growth, which was seen in all subtypes of liposarcoma with minimal variation, is different from that shown by other soft tissue tumours and is similar to the growth of embryonal fat in tissue culture.