Background. All tissues and organ cells have their own environment made up of extracellular matrix and mobile tissue fluid. Tissue fluid is a mixture of capillary filtrate containing nutrients with metabolic and waste products of cells. It percolates the cells and enters lymphatic to become lymph. Tumor cells, both primary and metastatic, proliferate, at least in the initial stage, in the tissue fluid (lymph) specific for the tissue in which they are located.
Aim. The aim was to examine the effects of human skin and subcutaneous tissue lymph on proliferation of rapidly growing, established, lymphoid and non-lymphoid human tumor cell lines which either grow or metastasize to skin and subcutaneous tissue.
Material and methods. Lymph was collected from cannulated leg superficial lymphatics in volunteers in a study on the effect of muscular contractions on tissue fluid flow (Ethics Committee consent). It was added to tumor cell cultures at various concentrations. B cell lines: Raji. Rael, Balm 1, KM3. T cell lines: Molt 4, CCRF-CEM, CCRF-HSB, Jurkat. Melanoma cell lines FMEX, LOX. Sarcoma cell lines OHS, OS3, SaOS-2.Epithelioma carcinoma HT3 , HeLa. Transformed keratinocytes Hacat. Short term tumor cell cultures: 3 days in RPMI 1640 with 5, 20, 40, 80 and 100% of lymph ,3HTdR was added 18h before harvesting. Long term culture in soft agar colony assay 14 to 21 days with 5,20, 40, 80% of lymph. Preincubation for 1-3 days in 5,20, 40, 80% of lymph and short term culture.
Results. Different tumor cell lines displayed considerable variations in the proliferation rate when cultured in media were supplemented with lymph from human skin. Low concentrations had stimulatory effect on some tumor lines. High lymph concentrations (40-100%) had an inhibitory effect on most cultured cell lines , but stimulatory effect was also observed. Preincubation of tumor cells with lymph demonstrated that the growth regulatory lymph factors might be absorbed by tumor cells.
Conclusions. Results indicate that the in vivo tumor growth in its tissue-specific humoral environment may have different kinetics than in the in vitro standard culture media.