Cancer metastasis comprises several steps. First tumor cells are shed into the blood stream (intravasation), circulating in the blood, and finally transmigrating out of the vessels (extravasation) into a new location in the body.

 

The initial arrest and attachment of tumor cells to vascular endothelium precedes their extravasation from the blood stream and is a crucial step in the tumor metastatic cascade. Tumor cell extravasation is equivalent, in many respects, to the entry of leukocytes into inflammatory tissue. Leukocyte extravasation consists of multiple, consecutive processes including the capture of circulating leukocytes, subsequent leukocyte rolling, arrest, firm adhesion and transmigration. Increasing evidence suggests that tumor cell adhesion to the endothelial lining and transendothelial migration is influenced by endothelial activation or tissue-specific differences in endothelium and depends on the expression of specific cell surface molecules. E-Selectin and Vascular Cell Adhesion Molecule-1 (VCAM-1) appear to play a pivotal role in the tumor-EC interaction.

 

• Quantify interactions between endothelium and tumor cells
• Fully quantify cell transmigration with no manual cell counting
• Highly sensitive results on a fluorescence plate reader