Chemotactic Migration Assays for Live-Cell Analysis

What is chemotaxis?

Chemotaxis is the directional movement of cells in response to a chemical stimulus and is an essential component of immune responses, tumor metastasis, wound healing and blood vessel formation. Cell-based assays for chemotaxis are critical to further understanding these biological processes.

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Introducing the Incucyte® Chemotaxis Assay

A novel, integrated solution for real-time visualization and automated analysis of chemotactic cell migration in a 96-well format – all inside your tissue culture incubator.

Chemotaxis Cell Migration Quick Guide

Key advantages of the Incucyte® Chemotaxis Assay

• Visualize cell migration in real time with fully automated analysis
• Highly reproducible 96-well kinetic assays suitable for screening
• Low cell usage ideal for rare, expensive and primary cell populations
• Relevant surface-mediated migration and detailed phenotypic insight

Download the Incucyte® Chemotaxis Assay Application Note

Common limitations of existing cell-based assays for chemotaxis

• Inability to visualize cell migration in real time (e.g., Boyden chamber transwells)
• Low throughput, technically challenging protocols (e.g., microfluidic devices)
• Lack of integrated quantitation

Visualize cell migration in real time with fully automated analysis

• Monitor every cell in your experiment, assess morphology and gain phenotypic insight from images and movies
• Validated for use with adherent and non-adherent cell types including immune, cancer and vascular cells
• Measure label-free or labeled cell migration without fixing, staining or cell scraping steps

Visualize and quantify chemotactic migration in your choice of cells. The Incucyte® Chemotaxis Assay has been validated with many adherent and non-adherent cell types including immune, cancer and vascular cells, and a wide range of chemoattractants, growth factors and biomatrix coatings. Watch the demonstration videos below.

Measuring Chemotaxis of HT-1080 cells

Measuring Chemotaxis of T cells

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Measuring chemotaxis using robust 96-well assays. Representative 96-well microplate graphs showing Jurkat migration towards the chemoattractant SDF-1α to illustrate inter-plate reproducibility (serial dilutions of chemoattractant across the plate). Z’ values ranged from 0.5 to 0.7 for four replicate plates over three days. Corresponding concentration-dependent response curves to SDF-1α provided reproducible measurements of SDF-1α potency (EC₅₀ value range 19 to 33 nM) within and between days.

Low cell usage ideal for rare, expensive and primary cell populations

• Use 10- to 100-fold fewer cells than standard transmembrane (e.g., Boyden chamber) approaches

Relevant surface-mediated migration and detailed phenotypic insight

• Investigate cell migration on biologically relevant surfaces
• Monitor morphological changes, cell-cell interactions and collective cell migration

Measure relevant surface contact-mediated cell migration. The low pore density of the Clearview membrane ensures that cells must migrate across the biologically relevant surface towards the chemoattractant. Neutrophils seeded on an uncoated Clearview membrane were unable to migrate towards the chemoattractants IL-8 and fMLP (left); however, those on Matrigel-coated membranes showed clear chemotactic profiles (right). These data suggest that integrin and/or cell surface receptor interactions with the substrate play a key role in neutrophil chemotaxis in this model. In contrast, no coatings were required for neutrophil migration studies using the Corning® Transwell® consumable (data not shown), suggesting that active migration of neutrophils across the Transwell® filter is absent in the Corning® Transwell® system.