mcf-7 cells, er+, weakly migratory,

MDA-MB-231 cells, er-, highly migratory.

there is no non-migratory cell line. the ability of migration is relative.

C-Src drives migration, you might check out belches et al, (parsons) 1990's, Coopman ..Mueller et al 1998, coopman et al 2000 nature, Thompson et al 1992 for papers that compare properties of breast cancer cell lines relative to invasion , invadopodia, motility and expression of and invasive growth in Matrigel that correlate with invasivenss and motility. I'm away from my computer but if you can't find these references let me know, [email protected], and I can send them in a week or so.

MCF-7 is ER+ and SKBR-3 is ER- and both are very poorly migratory cell lines. These two serve as negative control in my miRNA research. MDA-MB-231, MDA-MB-468, HST are very agressive cell lines with high migration capacity and are ER+.

My suggestion is, check the American Tissue Culture Collection (ATCC) database. They have good, concise descriptions of many cell lines. I would definitely read the reviews Susette Mueller suggested. In terms of migratory or non-migratory, like Jian Chen said, the term is relative to the degree of migration. However, Mousumi Majumder's suggestion of using the ER+ MCF-7 cell line is good. I have not worked with the SKBR-3 cell line but I know they are quite popular. If you were to use MCF-7 cells I would suggest also using TMX2-28 cells. The TMX2-28 were derived from the MCF-7 cell line and they lack the estrogen receptor. Using MCF-7 and TMX2-28 cell lines would allow you to compare the migratory capability and miRNA profiles of two cell lines that share a similar genetic background. These links might be useful: http://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI3254930/, http://mcr.aacrjournals.org/content/4/12/905.long.

I hope this helps. I wish you good luck and much success!

I forgot to mention that there are a few other cell lines you might be interested in that are highly migratory: MDA-MB-231 cells (triple negative breast, highly invasive cancer cells); mammary epithelial cells immortalized with the TERT subunit of telomerase, AKA 76NTert, which have a lower degree of migration than invasive cells; and the 76NTert engineered variant 76NTert-siSFRP1, in which secreted Frizzled Related Protein 1 (sFRP1) has been stably knocked down resulting in a hyperactive migratory and invasive phenotype. These last two cells lines have been fully characterized.

http://www.cancerci.com/content/9/1/11

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2407/11/59

You could also compare the miRNA signature of 2 subpopulation of the same cell lines differing by their motile phenotype as we described in : Invading basement membrane matrix is sufficient for MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells to develop a stable in vivo metastatic phenotype.

Author(s): Abdelkarim, Mohamed; Vintonenko, Nadejda; Starzec, Anna; et al.

Source: PloS one Volume: 6 Issue: 8 Pages: e23334 Published: 2011

The advantage would be to exclude miRNa differences related to the difference in the cellular background ( isologous comparison)

After you get your cell lines make sure you verify their identity using DNA fingerprinting techniques. The Lombardi Cancer Center tissue culture shared resource has such a service and could help you if that resource is not available to you. An additional tip is that your method of tissue culture will have a dramatic effect upon cell migration rates. You must passage regularly and before the cells come to confluence. Any neglect, and you should discard the cells as the negative effects will carry over from passage to passage. So, maintain your cultures carefully and using the same pattern of passaging just before confluence. There are also several sources of MDA-MB-231: ATCC and NIH, MD Anderson. They test the same by DNA fingerprinting but have differ migration invasion characteristics with ATCC cells less active.

Hello everyone,

I has been working on breast cancer resistance cell line and getting low cell viability. because of that I can not do migration assay. If anyone can help me to solve this issue I would appreciate it.

Thank you😊