Abstract
The ultrastructural analysis of malignant neoplastic tissues has revealed a variety of cellular modifications, none of them common to all tumors studied. Among the constituents of cancer cells, the cell surface displays more commonly significant structural alterations. The most frequent ones are: (1) increased thickness of the carbohydrate-containing surface coat, (2) relative absence of cell contacts, (3) increased mobility of carbohydrate surface receptors, (4) diminished number of subplasmalemmal microfilaments, and (5) increase in intramembranous particles revealed by the freeze-fracture technique. Some of the above modifications correlate with the degree of invasiveness of certain human carcinomas, and could, therefore, be used to assess the future evolution of these tumors. Up to the present time, electron microscopy has revealed that the modifications of the genome of neoplastic cells induced by physical, chemical or biological agents are mainly expressed as quantitative morphological changes of cell surface components. These structural modifications may be operative in the establishment of the abnormal cell surface properties characteristic of neoplastic cells.
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