Cell Scratch Assay

Cell Scratch Assay
• Many cell assays have been developed to quantify the ability of
various substances such as chemokines to regulate cell migration or
cell invasion, which is a crucial part of many studies including would
healing, immune response and cancer metastasis. Among all of them,
the cell scratch assay is the most widely used to study the
coordinated cell movement, since the cell scratch assay is appealingly
simple, inexpensive and well established type of cell migration assay.
Moreover, the cell scratch assay is particularly suitable to study
different kinds of cell interactions including the interactions of cells
with extracellular matrix (ECM) and cell-cell interactions. And this
assay is usually applied to study wound healing, angiogenesis etc.

• The cell scratch assay which makes the research of cell migration
straightforward and economical is based on the observation of a new
artificial gap, so called “scratch”, on a confluent cell monolayer. In
this assay, a gap, so called “scratch”, is created by physical
exclusion or by removing the cells from the area through other means
including mechanical, thermal or chemical damage in a monolayer.
Then, cell migration toward the gap is monitored and often
quantitated by capture of images at the beginning and regular
intervals during cell migration to close the scratch. The rate of cell
migration is determined by comparison of the images. This assay is
convenient and versatile, which can be easily adjusted for different
purpose. And cell scratch assay can also be applied for a high
throughput screen platform to obtain the better results.

• A great advantage of this simple method is that it mimics cell migration in vivo
to some extent. Furthermore, the patterns of migration in this assay can also
mimic the behavior of cell migration in vivo both loosely connected
population and sheets of cells (e.g., epithelial and ECs). Thus, this assay can
provide more useful results to research the underlying mechanism of cell
migration in vivo. In addition, the scratch assay allows the analysis of
intracellular signal transduction (e.g., by the use of green fluorescent protein
(GFP)-tagged proteins for subcellular localization) during cell migration with
the compatibility with microscopy including live cell imaging. It can also assess
the effects of expression of exogenous genes on migration of individual cells
by the combination with other techniques, such as microinjection or gene
transfection and determine the role of a particular gene in the regulation of
directional cell migration.

• We can provide all the service mentioned above with the advanced
research platform. Thus, the research of underlying mechanism of cell
migration including intracellular signal transduction, assessing
expression of exogenous genes on migration all can be realized at
Creative Proteomics.