Background: Electric pulses delivered to cells that are in close contact may induce cell fusion, by a process termed electrofusion. Recently it has been shown that electrofusion in tumours in vivo depends on tumour type. The aim of this work was to examine the differences in electrofusion in various cell lines, both in vivo and in vitro.
Materials and methods: LPB, B16F10 and DC-3F cells in vitro and LLC tumours in vivo were exposed to various electric pulses. The number of fused cells was then evaluated.
Results: Cell electropermeabilization was confirmed to be a necessary but non-exclusive condition to obtain a high level of cell electrofusion. The extent of electrofusion depends both on the degree of permeabilization and cell type.
Conclusion: It was observed that metastatic tumour cells easily electrofuse, suggesting that cell type-specific membrane properties and/or secretion of proteases determine the extent of electrofusion.