Scanning electron microscopic evidence for neural differentiation in Ewing's sarcoma cell lines.

A number of recent studies have suggested a relationship between Ewing's sarcoma (ES) and other small round cell tumours of childhood such as peripheral neuroepithelioma (PN). We report scanning electron microscopic studies on the character of induced neural differentiation in ES, neuroblastoma, PN, osteosarcoma and colon carcinoma. We found evidence of neural differentiation in both neural lines and in one of two Ewing's lines before treatment. After differentiation, both Ewing's and neural lines developed neuritic processes with varicosities and little arborization, except for the initially undifferentiated Ewing's line (A4573) which displayed extensive lateral sprouting from neuritic pro…