Robust Quantification of Regional Patterns of Migration in Three-Dimensional Cell Culture Models

Abstract

Purpose Wound healing assays is a common two-dimensional migration model, with the spheroid assay three-dimensional migration model recently emerging as being more representative of in vivo migration behaviours. These models provide insight into the overall migration of cells in response to various factors such as biological, chemotactic and molecular agents. However, currently available analysis techniques for these assays fall short on providing quantifiable means to measure regional migration patterns, which is essential to allow a more robust assessment of drug treatments on cell migration in a chemotactic fashion. Therefore, this study aims to develop a finite element (FE) based pipeline that can objectively quantify regional migration patterns of cells. Methods We have developed a novel FE based approach that is able to accurately measure changes in overall migration areas of 3D Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) spheroids that we generated using the primary cell lines from patients undergoing tumour resection surgery. We live-imaged the migration patterns of GBM spheroids and analysed them, first with the standard ImageJ method. We then performed the same analysis with the proposed FE method. Results When compared to the standard ImageJ method, our proposed method was able to measure the changes in a more quantitative and accurate manner. Furthermore, our regional migration analysis provided means to analyse the migration pattern seen in the phantom data and our experimental results. Conclusion Our FE based method will be a a robust tool for analysing cell migration patterns of GBM and other migrating cells in various diseases and degenerations.

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