Figure 4.

CSCs exhibit enhanced directional motility in 3D aligned collagen. (A–C) 3D plots showing contrasting migration trajectories of breast carcinoma cells in control (A) and aligned ECM (B) and their CSC subpopulation in aligned ECM (C). (D) Directionality of migration increases in aligned matrices compared with the control and remains unchanged for the CSC subset versus the whole (more differentiated) population. (E) Total motility in the direction of alignment significantly increases between the control and aligned groups and is vastly enhanced in the CSCs, largely owing to concomitantly greater speeds of migration along the direction of alignment (F), whereas persistence times (G) remain the same between control and aligned or decrease between whole population and CSCs. Data are mean ± SE, ^∗p < 0.0001, ^#p < 0.001, n = 130–140 cells/group for (D–G).