Shining new light on 3D cell motility and the metastatic process

摘要

Understanding tissue architecture and physical and chemical reciprocity between cells and their microenvironment provides vital insight into key events in cancer metastasis, such as cell migration through three-dimensional extracellular matrices. Yet many mechanistic details associated with metastasis remain elusive due to difficulty studying cancer cells in relevant three-dimensional microenvironments. Recently optical imaging has facilitated direct observation of single cells undertaking fundamental steps in the metastatic processes. As such, optical imaging is providing novel “optical biomarkers” with diagnostic potential that may be linked to cell motility pathways associated with metastasis, and can help guide new approaches in cancer diagnosis and therapy. Herein, we present recent advances in one subclass of optical imaging of particular promise for cellular imaging, multiphoton microscopy, that can be used to improve detection of malignant cells as well as advance our understanding of the cell biology of cancer metastasis.