Cancer Cell Migration Directed by Mechanochemical Dual Guidance

In this study, we quantified the effectiveness of ROCK-inhibitors (Y27632) and Rho-activators (CN03) on the cell migration directionality in presence of mechanochemical dual guidance. We incorporated a flow-induced ECM alignment in 3D chemotaxis assays to investigate cancer cell motility in 3D under the presence of a mechanical and a chemical guidance simultaneously. For the baseline, by measuring the coherency of the ECM in a small region around a target cell and applying a variety of serum gradients across the region, we can quantify the probability distribution of the direction of the MDA-MB-231 cancer cells migration with respect to the angle between the cues.