Ehrlich ascites tumor cells affected by oleic and linoleic acids lose their cytomembrane followed by the leak out of ribosomes. Some cells survived through this treatment when they were transplanted into mouse peritoneal cavity, but they changed their characteristics showing wider and less basophilic cytoplasm and smaller nuclei with dense nuclear chromatin and ambiguous nucleoli.
In spite of many attempts, no qualitative changes have been found between normal and cancer cells. Recently, Ishikawa found the specific antigenicity of cancer cell membrane which was common to several strains of canccr cells. Grobstein and coworkers have clarified that pancreatic cells can differentiate in association with neighboring mesenchymal cells, probably getting some information. Their works suggest that the cell differentiation will be induced by mutual association of cells by which the cell will receive some substance acting
as the information for differentiation. Taking the works of Ishikawa and his collabolators into consideration, it seems that cancer cells may be unable to differentiate by their defective or incomplete cell membrane through which they cannot associate with neighboring cells and fail to get the information. Almost all of the biological characteristics of cancer cells, immaturity, autonomic growth, invasive and metastatic properties independent from the neighboring cell groups, are well explained or consistent with this view. Recently, we found that the cell
membrane can be loosened by some unsaturated fatty acids resulting in the leak-out of ribosomes. In this paper it is demonstrated how the Ehrlich ascites tumor cell affected by fatty acids lose their cytomembrane and the ribosomes and how the cells survived through this treatment show different characteristics from the original ones, taking the appearance more matured cells.</p
