Study of lung-metastasized prostate cancer cell line chemotaxis to epidermal growth factor with a BIOMEMS device

Uday Tata, Smitha M N Rao, Akash Sharma, Krishna Pabba, Kushal Pokhrel, Bandita Adhikari, Victor K Lin and J-C Chiao

Abstract

Understanding the effects of different growth factors on cancer metastasis will enable researchers to develop effective post-surgery therapeutic strategies to stop the spread of cancer. Conventional Boyden chamber assays to evaluate cell motility in metastasis studies require high volumes of reagents and are impractical for high-throughput analysis. A microfluidic device was designed for arrayed assaying of prostate cancer cell migration towards different growth factors. The device was created with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and featured two wells connected by 10 micro channels. One well was for cell seeding and the other well for specific growth factors. Each channel has a width of 20 μm, a length of 1 mm and a depth of 10 μm. The device was placed on a culture dish and primed with growth media. Lung-metastasized cells in suspension of RPMI 1640 media¹ supplemented with 2% of fetal bovine serum (FBS) were seeded in the cell wells. Cell culture media with epidermal growth factor (EGF) of 25, 50, 75, 100 and 125 ng ml⁻¹ concentrations were individually added in the respective growth factor wells. A 5-day time-lapsed study of cell migration towards the chemoattractant was performed. The average numbers of cells per device in the microchannels were obtained for each attractant condition. The results indicated migration of cells increased from 50 to 100 ng ml⁻¹ of EGF and significantly decreased at 125 ng ml⁻¹ of EGF, as compared to control