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AMER. ZOOL., 24:563-570 (1984) Gastrulation: Is It Analogous to Malignant Invasion?1 RUTH BELLAIRS Department of Anatomy and Embryology, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1 6BT, U.K. AND MARIE-CHRISTINE VAN PETEGHEM Laboratory of Experimental Cancerology, Department of Radiotherapy and Nuclear Medicine, University Hospital, De Pintelaan 185, B-900 Gent, Belgium SYNOPSIS. The process of gastrulation has often been compared with that of malignant invasion. In this paper, the terms "malignant" and "invasion" are denned and the characteristics of malignant cells are discussed. One of the best examples of invasion during gastrulation takes place during the formation of the endoderm in the chick, when the definitive endoblast invades the hypoblast. Experiments are described in which the hypoblast is invaded by a) definitive endoblast, b) other normal embryonic cells, and c) three types of human malignant cells. It was found that not only does the hypoblast react differently to normal and malignant cells, but that the cell interactions differ also according to the type of malignant cells. In particular, there are differences in the behaviour of the cells and in the amount of extracellular material laid down between the hypoblast and malignant cells. It is concluded that even within the limits of this experiment, chick gastrulation is not wholly analogous to malignant invasion. Many investigators have compared certain processes that take place during embryonic development with those that occur during malignant invasion (e.g., Armstrong, 1977; Sherbet, 1982), and a number of now well-known examples tend to be quoted. These include the invasion of the uterine wall by the trophoblast; the migration of neural crest cells, primordial germ cells and growth cones of axons; and the migration of cells during gastrulation. In this paper, we propose to assess the value of such an analogy, but we shall restrict ourselves to the events in chick gastrulation and compare them with features that characterise malignant invasion. Let us start by establishing what we mean by the term "invasion" when it is used in the context of cell biology and pathology. It is the process whereby cells or groups of cells of one type pass into another region of the body and displace cells of another type. For exam- ple, cells from a carcinoma of the skin may break through the basal lamina and displace some of the underlying connective 1 From the Symposium on Gastrulation presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Zoologists, 27-30 December 1982, at Louisville, Kentucky. tissue and muscle. A similar sequence of events occurs at several stages in chick gastrulation. One oft-quoted example occurs as cells migrate through the primitive streak and then pass laterally as the newly formed mesoderm. But this event is not an ideal example of invasion however, since the new cells pass between the ectoderm and endoderm, and do not appear to displace other cells. Recently, however, it has become apparent that one of the best examples of embryonic invasion takes place in the chick embryo, during the formation of the definitive endoblast. The initial lower layer of the chick embryo is called the hypoblast. It is completed soon after incubation begins and does not contribute to the embryonic endoderm. Instead, it spreads out to the periphery of the area pellucida and subsequently forms extra-embryonic endoderm (Vakaet, 1962, 1970; Rosenquist, 1971, 1972; Fontaine and Le Douarin, 1977). The future embryonic endoderm (or definitive endoblast) is initially located around the anterior end of the primitive streak. At the time of its formation it inserts itself into the hypoblast and gradually spreads, so that it forms a patch in the central part of the lower layer while the hypo- 563 564 R. BELLAIRS AND M.-C. VAN PETEGHEM b c Definitive Endoblast Hypoblast Hypoblast FIG. 1. Diagram of the lower layer of the area pellucida of a young chick blastoderm, a. At about 12 hr of incubation, b. At about 18 hr of incubation, c. At about 20 hr. blast cells move away (Fig. 1). This is a process therefore which exhibits the essential features of invasion, as defined above. Malignant invasion may or may not be accompanied by other phenomena, such as the destruction of host tissue with the consequent occurrence of patches of necrosis and often of inflammatory responses at the invaded site by the host organism. The invasion of the hypoblast however does not include such features, though small patches of necrotic cells are indeed present in the chick gastrula (Bellairs, 1961). Indeed, localised patches of dead cells are a wellknown component of many tissues in developing embryos (Gliicksman, 1951) but are not necessarily associated with invasiveness. The term malignancy is less easy to define than invasion. It was originally applied by pathologists to tumours which are able to invade and usually also to metastasize, i.e., after the cells leave the primary tumour and pass to another region of the body, they form there a secondary tumour. Ultimately, malignant cells lead to the death of the host. Ideally then, the term malignant should be used only for a cell line or tumour that has been shown to possess these properties when it has been transplanted back into a whole animal. When we speak of malignant cells in this discussion therefore, we shall be concerned only with cells which come from lines which fulfill these criteria. We shall not be concerned with the behaviour of so-called "transformed cells" nor with that of non-malignant (benign) tumours (i.e., tumours which do not invade and metastasize). Invasiveness is an essential property of malignant cells and it is a property which is retained by them when they are transplanted into other tissues. It is thus a characteristic of the cells themselves rather than something imposed on them by their surroundings (Mareel, 1980). What then are the characteristics of true malignant cells which permit them to be invasive? Unfortunately, this is not an easy question to answer since different tumours exhibit different characteristics and it has not so far been possible to find a precise description which fits all malignant cells. The characteristics which have appeared promising have been lack of contact inhibition of locomotion (Abercrombie, 1975), loss of cellular adhesion (Coman, 1944), absence of directionality (Trinkaus, 1976), dependence on growth (i.e., increase in mass) (Eaves, 1973), active cell movements (Strauli and Weiss, 1977; Mareel and De Brabander, 1978) and secretion of proteolytic enzymes (Reich et al., 1975). There can be little doubt however that while some or even all of these characteristics may be important in certain situations others may be irrelevant, and are even shared by normal tissues. Mareel (1982) has criticised the idea that invasion depends on an active growth of the tumour and has suggested GASTRULATION AND MALIGNANT INVASION instead that growth may contribute indirectly to invasion merely because the number of invasive cells increases. The problem is further complicated by the fact that although certain aspects of malignancy, such as metastasis, can be studied only in vivo, most direct observations have had to be made in vitro. Indeed a wide variety of culture techniques have been used, and although there are indeed reasons for supposing that the behaviour of the cells in vitro parallels their behaviour in vivo, doubts must always remain (Mareel, 1982). Embryologists are of course more fortunate because it is easier to follow the behaviour of gastrulating cells directly in vivo, at least in the chick blastoderm (for a recent review, see Bellairs, 1982). Nevertheless, if we are to compare the behaviour of malignant and gastrulating cells, we perforce must carry out most of our experiments under the same conditions, i.e., in culture. Before discussing these experiments, there is one further point to be emphasized. So far we have spoken mainly of the characteristics of the invasive cells and have scarcely mentioned the host cells. But these too play a role. For example some tissues may be protected from invasion by the basement membrane which acts as a barrier (Ingber and Jamieson, 1982; Liotta et al., 1982) while other tissues, cartilage in particular (Kuettner et al., 1978), are highly resistant in their own right to invasion. In considering any invasive situation therefore we must take account not only of the invading tissue but also of the invaded one and the way it reacts. The questions we will ask therefore are: How does the hypoblast react to being invaded by: (a) Definitive endoblast (its normal invader)? (b) Other normal embryonic cells? and (c) Malignant cells? and (d) Do all malignant cells react in the same way to the hypoblast? The main series of experiments involve first, dissection of the hypoblast from the young chick embryo (usually before the primitive streak has begun to form) and 565 the explanting of it in culture so that it spreads as a monolayer. Second, another tissue is brought into contact with this monolayer. In the original series of experiments (Sanders et al., 1978), this second tissue was explanted at the same time as the hypoblast so that as the two tissues spread and formed monolayers, they came into confrontation with one another. When the hypoblast explant was confronted with a definitive endoblast explant the hypoblast cells became displaced by the definitive endoblast. The hypoblast explant tended to fragment into smaller groups of cells, many of which migrated around the definitive endoblast, so that the eventual layout of the tissues mimicked the situation in vivo. In a series of control experiments hypoblast was confronted with hypoblast, or with somites, while definitive endoblast was confronted with definitive endoblast, or with somites. It was found that the hypoblast behaved consistently, whatever the other tissue, by fragmenting and allowing the other tissue to invade it. It was suggested that the ability of the hypoblast cells to separate easily from one another might play an important role in the penetration of the hypoblast sheet by the definitive endoblast, both in vivo and in vitro. Unfortunately, we do not as yet possess any direct evidence as to the relative cellto-cell adhesiveness of the hypoblasts and of the definitive endoblast, but our interpretation receives some indirect support. Thus, the hypoblast of the early embryo both in vivo and in vitro rarely possesses desmosomes though simple tight junctions are not uncommon (Sanders et al., 1978; Stolinski et al., 1981; Al-Nasser and Bellairs, 1982). Small spaces can sometimes be seen between the cells. By contrast, in the definitive endoblast, the desmosomes are more common, tight junctions are more elaborate and intercellular spaces are not normally seen. Further, although the hypoblast in vivo is of an epithelial-like structure, it conspicuously lacks a true basement membrane (Sanders, 1979) and for that reason may be expected to offer little resistance to invasion. It was concluded therefore that certain properties of 566 R. BELLAIRS AND M.-C. VAN PETEGHEM the hypoblast may be important in permitting invasion of this tissue, in vivo as well as in vitro. When we approached the problem in a different way by explanting pieces of other embryonic tissues on top of the hypoblast monolayer, once again we found that these cells readily invaded it (Bellairs et al., 1981). Indeed, they passed right through the hypoblast monolayer, apparently by taking advantage of the small gaps in the sheet, and spread on the glass or plastic substrate forming a patch in the substance of the monolayer. However, the situation turned out to be a complex one, because when an extensive series of experiments using different tissues was carried out, it was found that irrespective of the identity of the tissue grown as an initial monolayer and that of the other tissue explanted on top of it, the upper tissue generally penetrated the monolayer and spread on the substrate. Thus, even hypoblast itself, when placed on the top of other tissues, tended to invade them and spread. Meanwhile, Mareel et al. (1970, 1975) had approached the problem from the other end. They had been interested in the use of the young chick blastoderm as a suitable host in which to implant malignant tissues. And indeed they had reported striking differences in the behaviour of the hypoblast in situ when normal or when malignant cells were inserted into it. Thus, when normal cells were inserted, the hypoblast healed, but when malignant cells were inserted, healing was inhibited. More recently, Van Peteghem et al. (1980) drew attention to the potential of the hypoblast as a test tissue for studying malignant invasion in culture, pointing out that the intracellular yolk spheres provided a good natural marker, and they carried out a series of confrontations between hypoblast and malignant cells in 3-D culture. Very recently however, Van Peteghem et al. (1983) have investigated the interaction of hypoblast monolayers with three types of malignant cells in monolayer cultures. These experiments were carried out in a comparable manner to those performed by Bellairs et al. (1981) in mono- layer culture. The results may therefore be compared directly. The malignant cell lines used were: HU456, which is derived from a transitional cell carcinoma of the human bladder (Schroyens et al., 1984). SAOS-2, which is derived from a human osteosarcoma (Fogh and Trempe, 1975) and LICR (LOND.)-HN4, which is derived from a squamous cell carcinoma of the human larynx (Easty et al., 1981). A similar series of experiments was carried out by Van Peteghem and Mareel (1982) using malignant MO4 cells, which are virally transformed C3H mouse cells (Billiau et al., 1973) which have been shown to produce invasive and metastasizing fibrosarcomas in syngeneic mice (Meyvisch and Mareel, 1982). A major aim of the experiments of Van Peteghem et al. (1983) was to determine whether the invasion of the hypoblast by the malignant cells was similar to its invasion by normal embryonic cells. In some respects it was so. Each type of malignant cell passed through the monolayer sheet of hypoblast soon after settling on it. It is likely that, as with non-malignant explants, they took advantage of the small gaps between the cells which are a transient feature of cultured sheets of hypoblast. In control explants of hypoblast these gaps tended to heal within a few hours, but if an explant had settled and given rise to an outgrowth, the gap enlarged to form a hole and usually failed to heal. With both normal and malignant tissues the hypoblast cells at the edge of the hole tended to become aligned parallel to it. It seems likely however that the failure to heal may have been due at least in part to the conditions of culture, since when similar experiments were carried out in 3-D culture (Van Peteghem etal, 1980), or in situ in the embryo (Mareel et al., 1975), non-malignant tissues did not prevent healing of the hypoblast, which grew back over them. In other respects however, the results obtained with malignant cells differed from those with normal ones. Indeed, the interactions that took place in the experiments GASTRULATION AND MALIGNANT INVASION 567 FIG. 2. Phase contrast micrographs of aggregates of malignant cells (M) explanted on top of hypoblast sheets (H) and fixed after 3 hr. a. HU456. b. SAOS-2. c. LICR (LOND.)-HN4. Note that with both HU456 and SAOS-2 cultures a cell-free space (arrowhead) lies between the malignant cells and the edge of the hole in the hypoblast (arrow). Scale bars: 100 nm. with malignant cells differed according to the type of malignant cells. One of the main differences between the malignant cells was that aggregates of HU456 cells, and to a lesser extent of SAOS-2 cells provoked a retraction of the hypoblast cells away from them so that a cell-free space was visible partly or totally around the malignant tissue for several hours (Fig. 2). A similar retraction occurred when aggregates of MO4 cells were explanted on top of hypoblast sheets (Van Peteghem and Mareel, 1982). (These cellfree spaces were later abolished as cells migrated out from the nodule of malignant cells.) Such retractions were never seen when definitive endoblast, or indeed any other normal embryonic tissue, was explanted onto the hypoblast. By contrast to the other malignant cell lines tested, the LICR (LOND.)-HN4 aggregates did not appear to cause such a retraction, and in this respect were more comparable with the non-malignant cells used by Bellairs el al. (1981). Whatever the type of malignant tissue which had been placed on a hypoblast sheet however, it was found that within about 24 hr the cells had spread from it for a short distance beneath the hypoblast so that there was clear nuclear underlapping. This underlapping was usually more extensive than the very limited underlapping of lamellae reported for normal embryonic cells (Bellairs et al., 1981; Al-Nasser and Bellairs, 1982). It was in this region of underlap that the interactions of hypoblast and malignant cells were most apparent. Probably the most important differences between the different malignant cell lines was in the amount and distribution of extracellular materials found in the cultures. Thus, cultures of hypoblast grown with SAOS-2 cells had more extracellular material than control hypoblasts growing alone. Cultures of hypoblast with HU456 cells had a comparable amount to control hypoblasts. And hypoblasts growing with LICR (LOND.)-HN4 cells had the least extracellular material (Fig. 3). In control explants of these malignant tissues growing alone for the same length of time extracellular material was absent apart from a small amount beneath the LICR (LOND.)HN4 cells. The location of the extracellular material in the narrow region of underlap is of particular interest. With the hypoblast/ SAOS-2 cell cultures, the large amounts of extracellular material lay between the 568 R. BELLAIRS AND M.-C. VAN PETEGHEM 3a 3b \ : ^ FIG. 3. Transmission electron micrographs of transverse sections from malignant cells (M) explanted on top of hypoblast sheets (H). The malignant cells have penetrated through the hypoblast sheet and spread beneath it. a. HU456 aggregates fixed after 3 days. b. SAOS-2 aggregates fixed after 3 days. c. LICR (LOND.)-H\4 GASTRULATION AND MALIGNANT INVASION hypoblast and the subjacent SAOS-2 cells. Although we have no direct evidence as to which of the two tissues secreted this material, nevertheless it appeared that an interaction had occurred between them which had resulted in this exceptionally high amount. This reaction is in striking contrast to that between the hypoblast and the LICR (LOND.)-HN4 cells where no extracellular material separated the two tissues. Indeed even the amount which would normally have been present under the hypoblast was missing in the region of underlap, and the two tissues lay so close together that not only were their cell membranes in close parallel apposition, but they even shared desmosomes. It appeared as if the interaction of the two tissues was favourable to both. Further evidence suggests that not only the amount and distribution of extracellular materials varied according to the type of malignant cell line, but the malignant cells themselves appeared to be affected differently by the hypoblast. Thus, cells of HU456 or of SAOS-2 which lay beneath the hypoblast were more spread than those which were not covered by hypoblast. It appeared that this was because those beneath the hypoblast were spreading at least partially on the extracellular materials. In striking contrast, the cells of LICR (LOND.)-HN4 apparently migrated directly on the undersurface of the hypoblast cells. In conclusion, let us return to the question of whether embryonic invasion, as exemplified by the invasion of hypoblast by definitive endoblast, is analogous to malignant invasion. The results of our experiments show that at least under the tissue culture conditions we have used, there are certain similarities, viz., the invading cells, whatever they are, are able to penetrate the hypoblast sheet and displace the hypoblast cells. 569 When we compare the reactions that occur between the hypoblast and normal embryonic cells, with those between hypoblast and malignant cells however, an important difference emerges. The hypoblast appears to react in much the same way to definitive endoblast and other normal cells, though a more extensive investigation is needed to establish that this is always so. By contrast, the hypoblast has no standard reaction to invasion by malignant cells. The interaction varies according to the cell line. In this respect therefore it is difficult to define the precise nature of malignant invasion even when we restrict ourselves to a small number of malignant cell lines. Even within the arbitrarily imposed limits of our experimental model, chick gastrulation is not wholly analogous to malignant invasion. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We are most grateful to Dr. M. M. Mareel for reading and criticising the manuscript. We wish to thank B. Buysse, O. Claeys, M. Nijs and A. Verspeelt for technical assistance, J. Roels van Kerkvoorde for preparing the photographic illustrations, R. Cleevely for Fig. 1, and G. Matthys-De Smet for typing the manuscript. This work was supported by grants from the Cancer Research Campaign, U.K., and the Kankerfonds van de Algemene Spaaren Lyfrentekas, Brussels, Belgium. REFERENCES Abercrombie, M. 1975. The contact behaviour of invading cells. The Ernst W. Bertner Award Lecture. In Cellular membranes and tumor cell behav- iour, pp. 21-37. 28th Annual Symposium on Fundamental Cancer Research. Williams & Wilkins, Baltimore. Al-Nasser, N. A. E.and R. Bellairs. 1982. 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