Advances in Wound-Healing Assays for Probing Collective Cell Migration

Collective cell migration plays essential roles in a wide spectrum of biological processes, such as embryogenesis, tissue regeneration, and cancer metastasis. Numerous wound-healing assays based on mechanical, chemical, optical, and electrical approaches have been developed to create model "wounds" in cell monolayers to study the collective cell migration processes. These approaches can result in different microenvironments for cells to migrate and possess diverse assay characteristics in terms of simplicity, throughput, reproducibility, and multiplexability. In this review, we provide an overview of advances in wound-healing assays and discuss their advantages and limitations in studying collective cell migration.

集体细胞迁移在广泛的生物过程中起着至关重要的作用，例如胚胎发生、组织再生和癌症转移。基于机械、化学、光学和电学方法的大量伤口愈合实验已经被开发出来，以便在细胞单层中创建“伤口”模型来研究集体细胞迁移过程。这些方法可以为细胞迁移创造不同的微环境，并且在简单性、通量、可重复性和多重性方面具有不同的实验特性。在这篇综述中，我们概述了伤口愈合实验的进展，并讨论了它们在研究集体细胞迁移方面的优势和局限性。