Epithelial–mesenchymal interactions in experimental oral mucosal carcinogenesis

In an effort to come to a better understanding of human oral mucosal carcinogenesis, an animal model was used in which the carcinogen 4-nitroquinoline-1-oxide was applied to rat palatal mucosa for varying periods of time. Histological and histometric analyses showed that there were quantifiable differences in the palatal epithelium to which carcinogen had been applied in comparison with control tissue. Tissue recombination experiments, using various combinations of the palatal mucosa and analysed after recovery from transplantation to hypothymic BALB/c mice, showed that control epithelium recombined with connective tissue from carcinogen-treated mucosa was altered, indicating that the underlying connective tissue modified histomorphological aspects of the epithelium in the later stages of carcinogenesis.