Changing intermediate-sized filament patterns in metastatic hepatocellular carcinoma cells of the guinea pig

The mesonephric (Wolffian) and paramesonephric (Müllerian) ducts of golden hamsters express different intermediate-filament proteins during development* *Supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Netherlands Cancer Foundation

“…However, our finding of the co-expression of keratin and vimentin in the same cells in situ has to be added to a growing number of reports describing such co-expression in normal tissues, especially in organs of mesodermal origin. Experiments with metastasising epithelial tumours in guinea pigs [59] have suggested that the expression of vimentin in addition to keratins is related to the ability of an epithelial cell to live outside of a compact epithelial structure (discussed in [29]). However, in developing epithelia, more examples of such co-expression have been reported: parietal-endoderm cells of the mouse embryo [29, 321 and human amnion epithelial cells [6, 26, 551 exhibit this feature, and it transiently occurs in the collecting tubules of human [20] and murine [33] embryonic kidneys, in Sertoli cells of fetal and newborn rats [45], and in the genital ducts of fetal rats [44].…”

“…The significance of this co-expression is still unclear. Experiments with metastasising epithelial tumours in guinea pigs [59] have suggested that the expression of vimentin in addition to keratins is related to the ability of an epithelial cell to live outside of a compact epithelial structure (discussed in [29]). In embryological differentiation, it is tempting to speculate that vimentin expression in epithelia may reflect the origin of these epithelia from the mesodermal germ layer, as Paranko and Virtanen [44] have concluded from their findings in rat genital ducts.…”

Phenotypic variations and differential migration of NIH:OVCAR-3 ovarian carcinoma cells isolated from athymic mice

“…According to Boyer et al, as a rat transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder dedifferentiated from epithelial to fibroblastoid phenotype, the cells became more motile and expressed vimentin type filaments [22]. Furthermore, hepatocellular carcinoma cells found in ascites have been shown to be positive for vimentin but when tumor cells seeded the peritoneal wall and formed solid tumors, vimentin expression was totally inhibited [23]. Since vimentin expression is not consistently observed in ovarian cancer cells, and yet in other studies appears to correlate with enhanced malignancy and motility, we compared the vimentin expression between ascites and solid tumor cells from the same mouse in an experimental model.…”

“…Vimentin expression has been positively correlated with highly malignant epithelial cells with dedifferentiated, fibroblastoid morphology [20][21][22][23]. We isolated ATC and STC populations and compared vimentin expression using immunofluorescence and immunoperoxidase methods.…”

Marker profile of mesothelial cells versus ovarian carcinoma cells

“…This confirms and extends the data of Wu et al (1982), using a different panel of anti-keratin MAbs. The strong expression of vimentin on cultured mesothelial cells (Connell et af.. 1983;LaRocca and Rheinwald, 1984), and the co-expression of vimentin with keratin can be considered as being characteristic of mesothelial cells in vivo (van de Molengraft et al, 1986). Initiation of virnentin expression is thought to be an adaptation to cell culture conditions, both in vitro and in vivo, rather than being indicative of mesenchymal cell origin (Franke et al, 1979).…”