FIG. 4.

Deformability-based mechanical phenotyping of breast and prostate cancer cells. The metastatic potential, histotype, morphology, origin of the cell lines, and measured DI of six breast cancer cells (a) and three prostate cancer cells (b) are summarized (ER, Estrogen Receptor; PR, Progesterone Receptor; ND, Not determined; AR, Androgen Receptor; and PSA, Prostate Serum Antigen). The boxplots represent the size-gated distribution (0.85 < D_c/D_h < 0.95) of the measured DI of breast cancer cell lines (c) and prostate cancer cell lines (d). The driving pressure is 15 kPa for all the cell lines. The central red line in the box represents the median, the bottom, and the top edges of the box indicate the 25th and 75th percentiles, and the whiskers represent the 10th and 90th percentiles. In the boxplot, n >100 for all the cell lines. Scatter density plots of DI versus cell size are shown in supplementary material Fig. S1 for these cell lines. The statistical significance was determined using the one-tailed Mann-Whitney U test with a significance level of 0.01: ns (p > 0.01); *** (p < 0.0001); and **** (p < 0.00001). The horizontal dashed line in (c) and (d) shows the maximum error limit in DI measurements.