The study of cell migration and cell motility is of great importance to understand diseases. Cell migration can be the cause of cancer progression and metastatic cancer cells. Cell motility is regarded as random cell movement, occurring in almost every cell culture, while cell migration is a response. Cell tracking can be used to distinguish between these parameters.
The most advanced and powerful feature of HoloMonitor is the single cell tracking functionality that allows monitoring and analysis of cell motility, cell migration and morphology of selected cells.
Details and changes over time is provided for each cell included in the analysis, and in mean values for the selected population.
The HoloMonitor technology provides easy identification of individual cells. Single cells can thus be selected for tracking enabling in depth analysis of cell movements and changes in morphology over time. When preferred all data can easily be exported for further analysis.
The tracking data can be displayed in a graph format (left) or directly overlaid on the cell images (right).
Cell movement is categorized both by non-directional cell motility speed and by directional cell migration velocity. Cell motility is regarded as random cell movement, occurring in almost every cell culture, while cell migration is a response to a cell attractant or repellent. Cell tracking can be used to distinguish between these parameters.
Video showing L929 cells, first untreated and thereafter treated with colcemid. Note how the drug influences cell motility.
Example how different cells in a population may behave.
The HoloMonitor® system offers unambiguous, non-invasive quantification of cell migration and motility allowing users to automatically track cell movements over time. Analysis of cell motility and migration can be used for e.g. chemotaxis studies and to assess drug impact on motility.
When preferred, further analyses can be undertaken for details on cell morphology and other parameters.
Preadipocyte differentiation from elongated structures to rounded adipocytes is adipogenesis. During the process cell cytoskeleton undergoes changes, which in turn alterate single-cell motility. In this work M. Lusting with colleagues for the first time evaluate differences between the motility of nondifferenciated preadipocytes and differentiated mature adipocytes using hologprahic imaging. Authors have used HoloMonitor M4 to show that preadipocytes move faster and further than adipocytes, idicating that cell cytoskeleton is altered during cell differentiation.
Commentary article discussing the fundamental role of cell movement studies in cancer research. Advantages of the HoloMonitor Cell Tracking and Wound Healing Applications over the transwell migration and invasion assays are highlighted, and includes the possibility to use the cells in experiments for other purposes after completing the imaging. In addition to single cell tracking, the HoloMonitor technology also benefits from the fact that morphology analysis can be performed of each cell. The author concludes that this indeed opens up for almost unlimited possibilities to perform cell morphology analysis using this methodology, since each image is very rich in cellular information.
The HoloMonitor software modules for cell tracking and wound healing analysis were evaluated and compared to the more conventional methods transwell migration and transwell invasion. Both HoloMonitor modules were found to be well-correlated with established standards, yielded reproducible results, and at the same time offered distinct advantages. The wound healing assay was the most tractable and automated method with good reproducibility, while the cell tracking module enabled identification of hypermobile subpopulations.
The article presents a single cell analysis of cell cycle and cell movement parameters of cells seeded on nanowires using HoloMonitor M4 for time-lapse imaging. Nanowires are presently investigated in the context of various biological and medical applications. In general, these studies are population-based, which results in sub-populations being overlooked. Altogether, this study highlight the importance of performing single cell analysis to increase our understanding of the versatility of cell behavior on different substrates.
The tumor microenvironment in vivo is not limited to the tumor cells themselves but also includes many kinds of immune cells. In this study the researchers explored cytotoxic effects of neutrophils in a co-culture with murine tumor cells. To exert their cell killing effect the neutrophils must reach the target cells, i.e. tumor cells. Using the HoloMonitor cell motility and migration assays the scientists could explore how the ability of the neutrophils to approach the cancer cells was affected during various conditions. Their findings are also supported and visualized in an associated time-lapse movie.
In this PHI webinar, our application specialist Lisa Bodily introduces the exciting field of label-free live cell imaging. We discuss live cell imaging techniques and highlight reasons to work label-free. You will learn how digital holographic microscopy visualizes your cells and get to know our HoloMonitor system. Also, our label-free applications for cell biology research are presented and some examples highlighted.
View the webinar on demand here