Development of a cell population migration assay

Cellular migration is central to many physiological and pathological processes, from wound healing and the immune response to cancer cell invasion. Many in-vitro assays have been developed to study these processes and can be classified by the nature of the assay, for example migration of single cells or entire populations, as well as migration on a planar surface or through a 3D structure. This work concerns the development of an assay to study the migration of whole populations of cells across a deformable planar substratum, which may be coated in adsorbed adhesion molecules. The technique detailed below was developed from the Teflon fence assay.