Comparison of adhesive bond strength of different cell types in vitro

Summary An established in vitro assay for quantitating cell-substratum adhesion has been utilized to measure the adhesiveness of 10 cell lines to a colloidal overlay. The procedure, a derivation of the William’s blister test for adhesives, involves growing cells to confluency on a polystyrene surface and then overlaying the monolayers with a Bacto-agar substratum. The cell-agar substratum systems are debonded and the^ra,adhesive bond strength, of the separation of the two interfaces calculated. The^ra’s were determined for the following cell types: SGL (gingival epithelial-like), L (transformed mouse fibroblasts), HeLa (human carcinoma), MDCK (canine kidney epithelial), WI-38 (human embryonic lung), Flow 1000 (human embryonic skin—muscle), Flow 4000 (human embryonic kidney), Flow 5000 (whole human embryo), BALB/c 3T3 (mouse fibroblasts) and SV₄₀-transformed BALB/c 3T3 (simian virus 40-transformed mouse fibroblasts). Transformed cells (L, HeLa and SV₄₀-transformed BALB/c 3T3) proved to be quantitatively less adhesive (^ra/cell) than either fibroblast or epithelial-like cell lines. Of the “normal” cells tested the kidney cells, human embryonic fibroblast and canine epithelial cells, and the gingival epithelial-like cells demonstrated a weaker binding to the colloidal overlay than the mouse fibroblasts (BALB/c 3T3), the human embryonic lung, the human embryonic skin-muscle, and the whole human embryo fibroblast cell lines. Concanavalin A increased the bonding strength of Flow 5000 cells after 24 hr incubation; however, the adhesiveness of the treated BALB/c 3T3 cells remained similar to the unterested samples while the^ra of the treated SV₄₀-transformed BALB/c 3T3 cells decreased. This research was supported by National Institute of Dental Research Grant DE03983.