Fig. 6From: Systematic optimization and evaluation of culture conditions for the construction of circulating tumor cell clusters using breast cancer cell linesEvaluation of the growth and proliferation ability of cell clusters in vitro. A 4T1 cancer cells cultured in suspension for 5 days were switched back to the culture conditions of the adherent cells and their ability to grow again was observed. B Detection of proliferative cells in MCF-7 cell clusters by EdU cell proliferation assay. DAPI (nuclei, blue), EdU (red). The quantitated results are shown in (C), n = 5, *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001. D Analysis of the growth ability of single cells and cell clusters in 3D gels by using time-lapse images. The quantitated results are shown in (E). n = 5, ***P < 0.001. F Colony formation of MCF-7 adherent cells and cells from MCF-7 cell clusters, the quantitated results are shown in (G), n = 3, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001. Two tail student's t-test analysis was used to compare the statistical difference between indicated two groups in (E) and (G), one-way ANOVA was applied in experiments containing multiple groups in (C)Back to article page