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Sera ofIt has been shown that chemically induced primary and transplantable hepatomas of mice and rats synthesize and secrete into the blood a specific protein of the embryonal serum, af-globulin (Abelev, 1963(Abelev, , 1965 Abelev et al., 1963a, b ; Grabar et al., 1965;Perova and Abelev, 1967). This protein which possessed distinct antigenic properties is a dominant component in the a-globulin fraction of foetal serum. It is usually discerned during embryonal and the first three weeks of neonatal life of mice and rats. It has not been detected in four week old or older animals. Synthesis of a/-globulin was found to resume in primary and transplantable hepatomas, though not in all cases. This protein could not be detected in a number of tumours of other than hepatic origin. Tatarinov (1964Tatarinov ( , 1965 has demonstrated that this phenomenon, af-globulin synthesis, takes place in patients with primary carcinoma of the liver. He suggested that this test could be used in the differential diagnosis of primary and metastatic liver tumours. He showed that the test was specific for hepatocellular tumours

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Cells of transplantable ascitic hepatoma originally induced in The possible correlation between the synthesis of uf-globulin and the ability of tissue culture cells to induce tumor is discussed.One of the peculiarities of experimental and spontaneous hepatomas is the production of embryonal serum protein, orf-globulin, which is not synthesized by the liver cells of adult animal (Abelev et al., 1963;Tatarinov, 1965; Grabar et al., 1966;Abelev, 1965). Hepatoma cells have been shown to retain the ability to synthesize upglobulin in tissue culture (Abelev et al., 1963;Abelev, 1965).Preliminary experiments demonstrated that cells of such cultures could synthesize not only uf-globulin but also other serum proteins-albumin and P,.,-globulin (cf. Abelev, 1965). Hepatoma cells in tissue culture, capable of synthesizing serum proteins, offer a convenient system for the study of a number of organospecific functions of malignant and normal liver cells, such as the interrelation between protein synthesis and the growth and proliferation of a cell, the problem of differentiation and dedifferentiation of a liver cell in the tissue culture, and many others.Data on stable cultures of mouse ascitic hepatoma XXIIa and on some of their cultural, biochemical and biological properties are given below.

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