In vitro motility evaluation of aggregated cancer cells by means of automatic image processing

Set up of an automatic image processing based method that enables the motility of in vitro aggregated cells to be evaluated for a number of hours.

Our biological model included the PC-3 human prostate cancer cell line growing as a monolayer on the bottom of Falcon plastic dishes containing conventional culture media. Our equipment consisted of an incubator, an inverted phase contrast microscope, a Charge Coupled Device (CCD) video camera, and a computer equipped with an image processing software developed in our laboratory. This computer-assisted microscope analysis of aggregated cells enables global cluster motility to be evaluated. This analysis also enables the trajectory of each cell to be isolated and parametrized within a given cluster or, indeed, the trajectories of individual cells outside a cluster.

The results show that motility inside a PC-3 cluster is not restricted to slight motion due to cluster expansion, but rather consists of a marked cell movement within the cluster.

The proposed equipment enables in vitro aggregated cell motility to be studied. This method can, therefore, be used in pharmacological studies in order to select anti-motility related compounds. The compounds selected by the equipment described could then be tested in vivo as potential anti-metastatic.