ABSTRACT
EBV-carrying human cell lines, depending on whether the cells are derived from Burkitt's lymphoma [BL] tumor biopsies or transformed by EBV in vitro, have different growth properties in vitro. In contrast, there are no clear differences between tamarin tumor lines and tamarin LCLs in vitro. Both types of tamarin cell lines could grow in agarose and formed colonies unlike human LCLs, although with a lower cloning efficiency than BL lines. The growth patterns of the tamarin tumor lines resemble more those of human LCLs than human BL lines, although the observation that tamarin LCLs can grow in agarose whereas human LCLs cannot may be significant. If it is accepted for arguments sake that Raji BL cells are representative of human EBV BL tumor cells, then both tamarin LCLs and tumor lines are more tumorigenic as judged by the single criterion of growth in agarose