Table 1.

Morphological comparison of spheroids before and after 14 days of cultivation. A manual classification was performed based on morphological attributes, which include “round vs. diffuse shape”, “compact vs loosely clustered”, and “sharply bordered vs blurredly bordered margins” (reported for each cell line as spheroid counts and percentage frequency). Furthermore, the budding behaviour was evaluated, specifically whether cells detached at the edge of the spheroids. There are significant differences in the shape, clustering, and spheroid margin between the two cell lines, but no significant difference in budding behaviour was observed (Fisher’s exact test, α = 0.05)

Characteristic	Expression	SW480	SW620	p value
Shape	Round	15 (53.6%)	4 (8.9%)	0.0001
	Diffuse	13 (46.4%)	41 (91.1%)
Clustering	Compact	23 (82.1%)	20 (44.4%)	0.0016
	Loose	5 (17.9%)	25 (55.6%)
Budding	Yes	18 (64.3%)	23 (51.1%)	0.3352
Spheroid margin	Sharply bordered	19 (67.9%)	17 (37.8%)	0.0166
	Blurredly bordered	9 (32.1%)	28 (62.2%)