ABSTRACT
Invadopodia generally located at the invasive cell-basal membrane, elongate and guide cells to the stroma, being crucial to locally degrade extracellular matrix (ECM) components, as collagen type-I and IV, laminin, and fibronectin. The majority of the invadopodia effector proteins are associated with cytoskeleton regulation, or with proteolytic activity is necessary to accurately identify these structures. Unraveling the components of invadopodia, how and where they are expressed, and in which manner they are regulated is of critical importance to understand the invasive process, and to develop novel therapeutic strategies. However, the quantification and understanding of invadopodia assembly and disassembly kinetics are still limited by technical constrains, namely in vivo visualization, by the nature of the invasive process that occurs deep in tissues, in a highly dynamic way. This chapter focuses on the most common assays used to study invadopodia formation and regulation as well as on the most common and recent advances on invadopodia visualization and quantification.
