Using state-of-the-art instrumentation and well-established methods, Creative Biolabs offers various antibody functional assays to assess its bioactivity and to investigate its mechanism of action. Particularly, to support drug companies and academic institutes in the development of anti-angiogenic antibodies, Creative Biolabs offers different in vitro angiogenesis assays, including cell migration assays and the tube formation assay, to clients across the globe.
Angiogenesis, the growth of new capillaries from preexisting blood vessels, is a complex process involving endothelial cell (EC) activation, disruption of vascular basement membranes, and migration and proliferation of ECs. Endothelial cell migration is essential to angiogenesis. This process is an integrated resultant of 3 mechanisms, namely (i) chemotaxis, the directional migration toward a gradient of soluble chemoattractants; (ii) haptotaxis, the directional migration toward a gradient of immobilized ligands; and (iii) mechanotaxis, the directional migration generated by mechanical forces. Cell migration is required for both tumor invasion and tumor angiogenesis, making it a particular target for designing anti-cancer therapeutics, especially antibodies. Creative Biolabs offers both the scrape wound assay and transwell assay to measure endothelial cell migration in response to anti-angiogenic antibodies.
Fig.1 Cell migration in tumor angiogenic cascade. (Bejarano, 2015)
The transwell assay is also known as the Boyden chamber assay. With this technique, endothelial cells are plated on one side of a porous membrane and a solution containing a test angiogenic factor is placed on the opposite side of the membrane from the cells. Migrated cells can be visualized by different dyes or fluorescence. This method has shown advantages such as high sensitivity, high reproducibility, and short duration. By coating the porous filter with type I collagen or Matrigel, the method can be used for testing cell invasion. The transwell invasion assay is the most frequently used method due to its easy setup.
The scratch wound healing assay is a simple and popular assay used to measure cell migration. In this assay, the surface of a cellular monolayer is wounded by scraping, and then the migration of cells can be tracked and captured by microscopy. The scraping is generally performed with pipette tips, needles, razors, etc. The advantages of this assay are its easy setup and low cost. Moreover, it is suitable for studying the regeneration of epithelial or endothelial cells. However, it does not address whether a treatment causes chemokinesis or chemotaxis.
In vitro Oris cell assay is a powerful, efficient, and economical method for cell migration analysis, which is ideal for testing and screening compounds that inhibit tumor cells with undirected migration. Equipped with rich experience, Creative Biolabs provides a cutting-edge Oris assay service with the potential to aid in cancer research.
Case Study
Figure 2. In Vitro Migration induction with C5a based on immortalized human microglia cells. (Left: MFI of migration induction; Right: Migration Ratio under C5a induction) (Creative Biolabs)
Backed by a team of highly skilled and trained biologists and drug discovery scientists, Creative Biolabs is confident in providing services with the best quality to assist in accomplishing your programs' goals. Our rich experience in working on not only basic research projects but also product development and commercialization significantly improves the project efficiency and success rate. For more detailed information, please feel free to contact us or directly sent us an inquiry. The more we know and understand your project requirements, the better we can serve you.
Reference
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