Rapid establishment of highly migratory cells from cancer cells for investigating cellular functions

Cell migration is closely involved in cancer cell invasion into surrounding tissue and metastasis to the distant organs. It is crucial for understanding the molecular mechanisms that regulate cell migration in cancer cells. The aim of this study is to establish a rapid induction method of highly migratory cells from cancer cells. Osteosarcoma MG-63 and colon cancer DLD1 cells were seeded at 1 × 10⁵ cells in 6-well plates. After 10 min, unattached cells were washed off three times with PBS. The cells which remained attached on the bottom of plates were cultured in DMEM containing 10% FBS. When the cells reached approximately 80% confluence, cells were harvested using trypsin/EDTA. The harvested cells were seeded in other 6-well plates and incubated for 10 min. The unattached cells were washed off and attached cells were further cultured. By repeating this procedure 11-12 times for 2 months, highly migratory MG63-A12 and DLD-A11 cells were obtained from MG-63 and DLD1 cells, respectively. In cell motility assay, the cell motile activities of MG63-A12 and DLD-A11 cells was 10.3 and 13.7 times higher than those of the parental cells, respectively. This procedure is useful to generate highly migratory cells for investigating cellular functions during tumor progression in cancer cells.