Figure 2.

BC cells adjacent to the biopsy wound undergo epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition

(A) Representative images of surgically resected, 25-day post-biopsy ER⁺, stage I clinical BC adjacent to and distant from the biopsy wound. Formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded sections were immunofluorescently stained for pan-CK (red) and E-cadherin (green) and counterstained with DAPI (blue). Black squares of biopsy-adjacent and -distant tumor regions in H&E image correspond to higher-power fluorescent images. The white dotted circle depicts the border of biopsy wound (BW).

(B) Paired line plot of the proportion of E-cadherin⁺/CK⁺ cells adjacent to (within 400 μm) and distant from (>3 mm away) the border of biopsy wound in 12 invasive ductal carcinomas. p values were calculated using the paired t test.

(C) Spatiotemporal mapping of E-cadherin⁺/CK⁺ cancer cells adjacent to and distant from the biopsy wound over various biopsy-to-surgery intervals.

(D) Representative images of Py230 tumors, adjacent to (<500 μm) or distant from (>2 mm away) the border of biopsy wound, are depicted by the white dotted line. 15-day post-biopsy tumors were immunofluorescently stained for pan-CK (green) and vimentin (red) in the left panel or pan-CK (red) and E-cadherin (green) in the right panel, counterstained with DAPI (blue).

(E) Western blot of E-cadherin and vimentin protein levels in whole tumor lysate of unbiopsied and 15-day post-biopsy Py230 tumors. The graph depicts the relative expression normalized by GAPDH (n = 4). The data are shown as mean ± SEM; p values were calculated using Student’s t test.