In vitro cell migration (wound healing) assay

In vitro scratch assay is an easy, fast and well-developed method to measure normal cell migration and tumor cell invasion. It resembles the functional confirmation for (endothelial-Mesenchymal Transition) EMT gene family switch-on.

Principle

Upon creation of an artificial gap, so called ‘‘scratch’’, on a confluent cell monolayer, the cells on both edges move in order to fill-in the gap ‘‘scratch’. The ability of normal / cancer cell to close the wound is proportional to the migration / invasion of cells.

Working protocol includes

·       Creating a ‘‘scratch’’ in a cell monolayer.

·       Capturing the images at the beginning and at regular intervals during cell migration to close the scratch.

·       Comparing the images to quantify the migration rate of the cells.

References

• Jonkman JE, Cathcart JA, Xu F, Bartolini ME, Amon JE, Stevens KM and Colarusso P (2014) An introduction to the wound healing assay using live-cell microscopy. Cell adhesion & migration 8:440-451.
• Varankar SS and Bapat SA (2018) Migratory Metrics of Wound Healing: A Quantification Approach for in vitro Scratch Assays. Frontiers in oncology 8:633.

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