[Importance of fibroblast chemotaxis in wound healing and tumor cell evasion]

Fibroblast are responsible for the synthesis of the structural proteins of the connective tissue. A further property of these cells, their migratory ability, could be analyzed in the last years. A special form of migration is chemotaxis, which can be quantitatively measured in a modified Boyden chamber in-vitro. Using this method chemoattractive substances could be characterized, which are able to stimulate fibroblasts and tumorcells to chemotactic migration. Furthermore it could be proved, that benign and transformed cell lines react in a different manner towards these chemoattractive substances. The in-vitro results allow some hypotheses about both fibroblast migration in wound healing or chronic inflammation, and the mechanisms of tumor cell evasion in the tumor surrounding tissue or the metastasizing process in other organs.