Possible role of fibronectin in malignancy

Frozen sections of tumors induced by injecting virally transformed cells into animals were stained for fibronectin by immunofluorescence. Many tumor cell lines do not express fibronectin in tumors in situ even though some of them express fibronection in culture. Cell shape and hormones appear to influence the expression of fibronectin in culture; however, it is nuclear how fibronection expression is regulated in vivo.