Wound Healing Assay

Cell migration is a crucial biological process involved in immune responses, early stages of development, metastasis of cancer, and also wound healing. Therefore, it is important to study cell migration and the effects of compounds on this process to better understand conditions such as cancer metastasis and impaired wound healing. Wound Healing Assay, also known as Scratch Assay, is an exceedingly widespread, technically simple, and inexpensive in vitro method used to analyze collective migration of adherent cells, the procedure of which involves creating a wound in a confluent monolayer of cells and afterward image acquisition and usage of ImageJ software for analyzing the change in wound area and rate of cell migration after inoculation with certain compounds. The current chapter focuses on the Wound Healing Assay, a variety of techniques used for wound creation, and the detailed methodology.