I am planning to flow breast cancer cells, in a buffer, into a device. What is the highest flow rate I could use if I want the breast cells to attract to the CXCL12 chemokine? Specifically, I am putting the CXCL12 on the side of the device and flowing the cancer cells in the middle. Will the force of attraction be strong enough to eventually have all the cancer cells on the side of the device with the chemokines?
Your experimental design of CXCL12 on the side of the device and flowing the cancer cells in the middle seems to be artificial. Tumor tissue is composed of surrounding ECM (collagen and laminin etc. ) as well as cancer cells and cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) with alpha-SMA. The bio-availability of chemokine CXCL12 should be evaluated with the consideration of factors other than tumor cells themselves. The blood vessel endothelial cells determine the permeability of CXCL12. Further, the stability (half-of-life period) of the chemokine in vivo cannot be predicted. The persistent secretion of paracrine manner is essential to evaluate the concentration in the serum and tumor tissue.
Why not check the expression of CXCR4 (CXCL12 receptor) before and after administration of CXCL12 in vivo model in the long term, since CXCL12-CXCR4 axis plays a negative feedback loop.
Our colleague Go gives you good advice. Generally, tumor cells sense changes in the endothelium first by way of selectin and CAM expression, attach and roll on the endothelium and then sense the chemoattractant and extravasate. It is a complicated experiment to replicate in a device. You may want to use a simple boydon chamber/transwell assay (you'll need to add extracellular matrices to the membrane) to test the concept first before building the complexity in a flow apparatus. Good luck.
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