Skip to main content
Fig. 3 | Breast Cancer Research

Fig. 3

From: Fluid flow exposure promotes epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition and adhesion of breast cancer cells to endothelial cells

Fig. 3

Representative confocal microscopy images of static (n = 8) and 20 h flow-exposed (n = 8) MDA-MB-231 cells (a), scale bars = 90 µm; and static (n = 8), 20 h flow-exposed (n = 8) and EMT-induced (n = 6) Human Mammary Epithelial Cells (HMECs) (e), analyzed for EMT by simultaneously staining with fluorochrome-conjugated antibodies for Vimentin (green), Snail (red) and E-Cadherin (blue). Scale bars = 60 µm. Normalized fluorescence intensity of static and flow-exposed MDA-MB-231 cells (b), and HMECs (f). Fluorescence intensity was normalized to number of cells in each microscopic field and compared to intensity in static controls. Data shown represent the means ± standard errors of the means of data from at least 3 samples for each condition. au = arbitrary units. Quantitative RT-PCR analysis of VIM, SNAI2 and CDH1 expression between static and flow-exposed MDA-MB-231 cells (c) and HMECs (g). Triplicate wells were run for every sample and B2M was used as the reference gene. Representative immunoblots showing no differential expression of Snail1 and overexpression of Snail2 following exposure to fluid flow in MDA-MB-231 cells (d). α-tubulin was used as the protein loading control. Lower panels show densitometric analysis of the blots normalized to α-tubulin. Data shown represent the means ± standard error of the means of data from at least 3 samples for each condition. (*) p < 0.05

Back to article page