A Device for Performing Cell Migration/Wound Healing in a 96-Well Plate

The overall goal of this eight-channel mechanical cell wounder is to quantify the effect of treatment on cell migration using the wound-healing assay in a rapid and semi-high throughput manner without the use of expensive and complicated equipment. Cell migration is an important cellular process in different physiological and powerful physiological conditions. In vitro wound-healing assays are used in different studies including cancer, rescular, and dermatologic studies.

The main advantage of this method is that the effect on cell migration can be monitored on a 96-rail page, enabling different treatment conditions to be observed simultaneously. Demonstrating the procedure will be Ka Chun Ng, a grad student from our laboratory. To begin the experiment, prepare the pinholder by fixing the wounding pins at equal distances.

Hold the pipet tips and move the adjustable wounding pins up and down to adjust the tip height. Next, fit the adjustable guiding bar on different brands on 96-well culture plates and ensure that the wounding area is in a fixed position. Fix the adjustable wounding pin by tightening the hex screw.

Fix the guiding bar in position by tightening the hex socket head caps on both ends. Use an M5 hex wrench to loosen the hex socket head caps. Insert a suitable number of adjusting rings to both sides of the pinholder so that the guiding bars fit perfectly with the width of the 96-well culture plate.

Then tighten the hex socket head caps to fix the guiding bar. Begin adjusting the guiding bars by fitting the wounding pins with sterile 10-microliter plastic pipet tips. Next, loosen the hex socket head caps with the M5 hex wrench.

Hold the wounder and dip the wounding pins into one column of a 96-well culture plate. Then adjust the height of the guiding bars until all of the tips barely touch the bottom of the wells. Tighten the hex socket head caps.

Ensure that the wounder now perfectly fits on the culture plate and that the pins are well-positioned in the middle of the wells. Hold the wounder perpendicular to a flat, sterile surface, such as a Petri dish and loosen all the hex screws with the M3 hex wrench. Tap the wounder until all of the tips evenly touch the surface.

After the tips evenly touch the surface, tighten the hex screws again to lock the pins in position. Then check the evenness of each tip by tapping the wounder gently on the flat sterile surface. Seed human umbilical vascular endothelial cells on a 0.1%gelatin-coated 96-well cell culture plate.

Culture cells in medium 199 supplemented with 20%heat-inactivated fetal bovine serum, 1%penicillin streptomycin, and 0.09 grams per liter heparin. Maintain cells in a humidified incubator with 5%carbon dioxide at 37 degrees Celsius overnight before being used. Once cells have received 100%confluency, place the wounding tips at the leftmost side of each well within the same column of the culture plate.

Slide the wounder across to the other side of the well. Make sure the wounding tips are touching the bottom of the well. To ensure the wound in every well of cell molinar is centered and in same wave, swing the wounder spanning across the well to the other end.

Repeat the scratching for all columns. After wounding, discard the medium in each well and replace it with fresh medium containing testing compounds. Then move onto data acquisition and image analysis.

Representative images of a row and a column of wells immediately after scratching enable quantitative analysis of the width of each wound. Wound images were obtained from human umbilical vein endothelial cells and human dermal fiber blasts. The dotted line indicates the wound area and the solid line indicates the cell migration area.

After watching this video, you should have a good understanding of how to use this device to perform a wound-healing assay in a 96-well page in a semi-high throughput manner and to ensure every well is scratched by the wounder.