Di Costanzo Ezio, Ingangi Vincenzo, Angelini Claudia, Carfora Maria Francesca, Carriero Maria Vincenza, Natalini Roberto
Istituto per le Applicazioni del Calcolo "M. Picone", Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Naples, Italy.
Neoplastic Progression Unit, Department of Experimental Oncology, IRCCS Istituto Nazionale Tumori "Fondazione G. Pascale", Naples, Italy.
PLoS One. 2016 Sep 28;11(9):e0162553. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0162553. eCollection 2016.
Experiments of cell migration and chemotaxis assays have been classically performed in the so-called Boyden Chambers. A recent technology, xCELLigence Real Time Cell Analysis, is now allowing to monitor the cell migration in real time. This technology measures impedance changes caused by the gradual increase of electrode surface occupation by cells during the course of time and provide a Cell Index which is proportional to cellular morphology, spreading, ruffling and adhesion quality as well as cell number. In this paper we propose a macroscopic mathematical model, based on advection-reaction-diffusion partial differential equations, describing the cell migration assay using the real-time technology. We carried out numerical simulations to compare simulated model dynamics with data of observed biological experiments on three different cell lines and in two experimental settings: absence of chemotactic signals (basal migration) and presence of a chemoattractant. Overall we conclude that our minimal mathematical model is able to describe the phenomenon in the real time scale and numerical results show a good agreement with the experimental evidences.
细胞迁移和趋化性分析实验传统上是在所谓的博伊登小室中进行的。最近的一项技术，即xCELLigence实时细胞分析技术，现在能够实时监测细胞迁移。该技术通过测量随着时间推移细胞对电极表面占据逐渐增加所引起的阻抗变化，并提供一个与细胞形态、铺展、褶皱和黏附质量以及细胞数量成比例的细胞指数。在本文中，我们基于对流 - 反应 - 扩散偏微分方程提出了一个宏观数学模型，用于描述使用实时技术的细胞迁移分析。我们进行了数值模拟，以将模拟模型动力学与在三种不同细胞系以及两种实验设置下（无趋化信号（基础迁移）和存在趋化剂）观察到的生物学实验数据进行比较。总体而言，我们得出结论，我们的最小数学模型能够在实时尺度上描述该现象，并且数值结果与实验证据显示出良好的一致性。
