In vitro and in vivo imaging of cell migration: two interdepending methods to unravel metastasis formation.

Metastasis development requires the migratory activity of tumor cells. It is therefore important to understand the molecular mechanisms of this migration in order to prevent metastasis development, which is the pernicious step in most solid tumor diseases. A lot of methods have been invented to investigate tumor cell migration, but not all are equally suited and no method alone is able to deliver a complete picture of tumor cell migration. We herein suggest a combination of three-dimensional in vitro and in vivo methods for the investigation of tumor cell migration and summarize the knowledge, which has been reached so far.