Abstract
A number of studies have shown that tumor cells fuse with other tumor and non-tumor cells. In the present study on tumor cell lines derived from glioblastoma, breast cancer, and melanoma, we estimated the frequency of fusion between tumor cells by establishing the fraction of cells with whole tumor-genome duplication in each cell line. Together with this, the capacity of the tumor cell lines to spread through a basement membrane scaffold was assessed, in order to test the hypothesis that pericellular proteolysis by enzymatic release in the spaces of intercellular contact could account for differences in the fusogenicity of tumor cells. The difference in invasiveness between the cell lines accounted for their specific amount of cells with tumor-genome duplication, which, depending on the cell line analyzed, ranged from 2% to 25% of the total cells. These results support the hypothesis that cell-to-cell invasion eliciting membrane fusion causes polyploidization in tumor cells.