To my understanding, invasion is invasive migration. It monitors cell movement through extracellular matrices. And it is a fundamental function underlying metastasis, and invasion of cancer cells. Some people told me, if you have invasion results, you don't need to do the migration. If you can't get invasion results, migration results may be used as a replacement. I just want to confirm if this is widely accepted idea.
You can see more in cell numbers in an in vitro invasion assay because cells migrate faster into an extracellular matrix in a set time or because there is more Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition overall. Thus there is some value in comparing migration rate. Not all fibroblast-shaped cells are equally invasive.
If You analyze the influence of some drugs on invasion and migration it is good to make both assays. I have analyzed effect of the inhibition on one enzyme and if it is reversed by stimulation of some signalling pathways by agonists, and reversion was nicely visible for invasion (inhibition increased the invasion and receptor agonists have reversed it) but not for migration (was increased by inhibition and agonists had no influence whatsoever). This way I got a lot more information about the mechanisms than one assay (the activated by agonists pathway have reversed the effect of inhibition on probably proteolytic activity of cells but not on migratory ability). The publication I have made about that is, however, still in press but should be shortly available.
At the risk of self-promotion, our recent paper on OLFM1 showed differences in cell invasion but no difference in the rate of cell migration.
To me the two assays are different and also depend on how you perform them. Usually I will do both. It is not uncommon when you submit a manuscript then reviewers insist they are different and can not replace each other.
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