Development of a Microfluidic Chip for 3D Cancer Cell Migration Assay

Abstract

Metastasis is a serious disease caused by primary tumor cell dissemination to different organs. Although, invasion of primary tumor cell is the initial step required in tumor metastasis, migration is also the important key elements activity in cancer cell detach from the primary tumor and spreading to other extracellular matrix. Currently, various cell migration assays have been developed to investigate the motility behavior of the multicellular, including wound healing / scratch assay and transwell assay. However, most of the in vitro researches of cell motility are based on two-dimensional (2D) culture systems, which limit our understanding of the mechanisms of cell motility. Thus, three dimensional culture (3D) model is necessary which is able to mimic conditions and microenvironments of in vivo. In this study, a microfluidic chip was developed and matrigel was used as cell scaffold. In order to perform 3D cell migration assay, cells cultured in 3D environment and invaded through a matrigel filled microchannel. In addition, we determine the motility of the cancer cell correlated to the interleukin 6 (IL-6) concentration. Here, we successfully developed a prototype of visualizing and quantifying 3D cell migration assay.