Fig. 6

Evaluation 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)