Influence of hyaluronic acid or phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate on the migration capacity of a murine lymphoma cell line (Eb) and its metastatic variant (ESb)

The in vitro migration of two murine T cell lymphoma cell lines (Eb and ESb) was studied employing a three-dimensional collagen matrix and time-lapse video recording. In the highly metastatic cell line ESb, which had a low spontaneous locomoting activity, migration could clearly be stimulated by hyaluronic acid (HA) whereas only a small increase was found after incubation with phorbol myristate acetate (PMA). The observed stimulation could be attributed to an increase in recruitment of locomoting cells and not to changes in migration parameters of motile individual cells such as percentage of time locomoting, velocity or distance migrated. Incubation of the low metastatic cell line Eb with HA led to a decrease in migration but blocking of CD44, the principle ligand for HA, by preincubation with an anti-CD44 mAb (KM114), followed by HA exposure increased the locomoting activity significantly. The effect was based on both an increase in recruitment as well as in all migration parameters regarding motile individual Eb cells.