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Home / Applications / Cell Migration / Cell Motility
March 8, 2019

Cell Motility Assay

Without requiring labels, the HoloMonitor® Cell Motility Assay allows cell-friendly and fully automated cell motility studies, inside your incubator.

Differ cell motility from cell migration

Study unlabeled cells in the cell incubator, as long as needed, to get relevant motility and migration data. This enables both kinetic cell motility studies providing cell population data and tracking of single cells, using the Track Cells module.

Explore how cell motility changes

The HoloMonitor® Cell Motility Assay is designed to explore the average motility of cells in a population and is ideal for studies investigating how various treatments, drug candidates, or environments, influence cell movement over time. Analyze long term cellular movement when using your standard cell growth media and environment — no labeling, staining or phototoxicity needed.

Captures and automatically presents speed and distance

The HoloMonitor App Suite software automatically analyzes and presents motility data in terms of speed kinetics, i.e. average cell speed over time, and accumulated mean distance, at each time point. Note that the result presentation is immediate and progresses as the experiment proceeds.

The software automatically presents cell motility data for the cell populations. If preferred, all data can easily be exported to Excel for further analysis.

Assessment of kinetic motility of a cell population

HoloMonitor® Cell Motility Assay:

  • Is designed to explore the motility of a cell population over time.
  • Is ideal for detection of differences in cell motility causes by the investigated drug or environmental condition vs controls.
  • Automatically calculates and presents  kinetic motility data in terms of mean speed of all cells in the population + accumulated mean distance at each time point.

Experiments set up using App Suite software can easily be re-analyzed to generate results for another assay type. For example, for a motility experiment, proliferation results can be achieved from the same experimental data.

After imaging the undestroyed cells, or the supernatant, can be used again for additional analysis using other methods.

Motility and migration studies of single cells, or sub-populations of cells, can be performed using the Track Cells module.

Key Kinetic Cell Motility References

  • Adipocytes Migration is Altered Through Differentiation
    M. Lustig et al.
    Microscopy and Microanalysis (2019)

    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.

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  • Moving into a New Dimension: Tracking Migrating Cells with Digital Holographic Cytometry in 3D
    A. Görloff Wingren
    Cytometry Part A (2018)

    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.

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  • Evaluation of Holographic Imaging Cytometer HoloMonitor M4 Motility Applications
    Y. Zhang and R. L. Judson
    Cytometry Part A (2018)

    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.

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  • Single cell analysis of proliferation and movement of cancer and normal-like cells on nanowire array substrates
    Li Z. et al.
    J. Mater. Chem. B (2018)

    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.

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  • TRPM2 Modulates Neutrophil Attraction to Murine Tumor Cells by Regulating CXCL2 Expression
    M Gershkovitz et al
    Cancer Immunology, Immunotherapy (2018)

    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.

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The HoloMonitor provides the expert methodology for label-free imaging of living cells. The measurements are non-invasive, meaning that no fluorescent probes or dyes are used, which otherwise could affect the behaviour of the cells. The generated data can easily be analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively with the provided software. We use the HoloMonitor for studying the effect of drugs on cell morphology, viability, death and motility of cancer cells. With this innovative technique, we can monitor cells over time and get reproducible results that are presented as images, time-lapse movies or diagrams.

Prof. Anette Gjörloff Wingren

Faculty of Health and Society, Malmö University