Determination of Breast Cancer Cell Migratory Ability.

Cell migration is defined as the movement of individual cells, sheets of cells, or clusters of cells from one location to another (Friedl et al., Int J Dev Biol 48:441-449, 2004). This ability of cells to migrate is critical to a wide variety of normal and pathological processes, including embryonic development, wound healing, immune responses, and cancer (Leber et al., Int J Oncol 34:881-895, 2009). Migration of tumor cells is widely thought to be an essential component of the metastatic spread of tumor cells to new sites, and inhibiting metastasis is an important therapeutic goal in cancer treatments (Horwitz and Webb, Curr Biol 13:R756-759, 2003). Therefore, the ability to observe and quantify migration in cancer cells is critical not only for basic cancer biology but especially for drug development (Friedl and Gilmour, Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 10: 445-457, 2009). Researchers continue to develop new techniques for measuring cell migration in vitro. This chapter will discuss two techniques commonly used to study cell migration: wound healing and Boyden chamber migration assays.