Quantifying Collective Cell Migration during Cancer Progression

As tumors become more malignant, cells invade the surrounding tissue and migrate throughout the body to form secondary, metastatic tumors. This metastatic process is initiated when cells leave the primary tumor, either individually or as groups of collectively migrating cells. The mechanisms regulating how groups of cells collectively migrate are not well characterized. Here we study the migration dynamics of epithelial sheets composed of many cells using quantitative image analysis techniques. By extracting motion information from time-lapse images of cell lines of varying malignancy, we are able to measure how migration dynamics change during cancer progression. We further investigate the role that cell-cell adhesion plays in these collective dynamics by analyzing the migration of cell lines with varying levels of E-cadherin (a cell-cell adhesion protein) expression.