Abstract
Cell adhesion, the binding of a cell to the extracellular matrix (ECM), other cells, or a specific surface, is essential for the growth and survival of the cell and also its communication with other cells. The process of cell adhesion involves a range of biological events such as three-dimensional re-organization of the cytoskeleton, biochemical reactions in the cell, and changes in molecules on the surface of the cell. Cancer cells, especially the highly metastatic types, are believed to have enhanced adhesion ability that often facilitates the migration of the cells to a new site to establish new tumors in the body. Cell adhesion assay is therefore often used to evaluate the metastatic ability of cancer cells. In addition, the assay can also be used to assess the effect of certain treatment (e.g., exposure to chemicals) on the ability of cells to adhere. A modified cell adhesion assay protocol is described here for studying the interactions between cells and extracellular materials.
Materials and Reagents
Equipment
Procedure
Notes
Acknowledgments
This protocol was developed in the Department of Immunology, Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA and adapted from Chen et al. (2009), Humphries et al. (1998) and Mobley and Shimizu (2001). The work was funded by NIH grants CA079871 and CA114059, and Tobacco-Related Disease, Research Program of the University of California, 15RT-0104 to Dr. Jiing-Dwan Lee [see Chen et al. (2009)].
References
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Cell adhesion is a complex process and different factors involved in this process would contribute to the final results. For interpretation of the results, it really depends on what you are looking for and how your experiment is designed. Take just a simple (and ideal) example, if a chemical is capable of directly interfering with cell receptor-ECM interactions, less cell adhering to the surface would be expected to be seen. Most chemicals/proteins may alter cell adhesion by certain indirectly ways, possibly through changes in different cell signaling pathways and remodeling of the cytoskeletal components. Therefore cause must be taken to design and carry out experiments, as well as interpretation of the readouts.
Hi yalling , I want to do cell adhesion study with my synthesize peptide. I read your protocol, I am decide to use it , would you please suggest me the paper from where I get more information on the protocol and how to interpret result ???Thank you in advance.
There are actually tons of references for cell adhesion assay. For background information and methods, please see the references(and the references therein) below as examples. I would always recommend to start with some simple tests then make necessary modifications to these protocols.Liotta et al. Nature2001; 411: 375–9Fashena et al. Nat Cell Biol2000; 2: E225–9.Chen etal. Cancer Res2009 69; 3713