EVALUATION OF AN INVITRO INVASION ASSAY FOR USE ON SOLID TISSUE SAMPLES AND CULTURED-CELLS

An invasion assay, developed for monitoring the in vitro penetration o f reconstituted basement membrane, matrigel, was modified and successf ully applied to solid tumours, normal tissues as well as a variety of normal and tumour cell lines. However, we found that some normal fibro blasts were capable of in vitro invasion whilst some malignant cell li nes with invasive capacity in vivo did not penetrate the matrigel. Nev ertheless, this method can distinguish invasive capacity within a tumo ur model, and as a consequence may be used to elucidate some of the bi ochemical mechanisms in the invasion process comparing cells grown bot h in vitro and in vivo. Since the method does not always correlate wit h invasion in vivo the results must be interpreted with caution.