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. 2021 May 19;11:643003. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2021.643003

Figure 1.

Figure 1

CTC are correlated with BC patients’ cancer stage, tumor size and lymph node involvement and can be used to distinguish BC patients from patients with benign tumors and healthy female. (A) Immunofluorescent staining of a captured CTC, indicated by the yellow arrow. CTC is defined as a DAPI (blue) positive, PanCK-FITC (green) positive and CD45-PE (orange) negative cell, while a white blood cell is indicated by the white arrow as a DAPI positive, CD45-PE positive and PanCK-FITC negative cell. (B) CTC enumeration can differentiate BC patients from patients with benign tumors and healthy females (both p < 0.0001). (C) CTC enumerations are correlated with BC patients’ cancer stage (p = 0.0007), tumor size (p = 0.0015) and lymph node involvement (p = 0.0034). More CTC are found in patient with bigger tumors and more lymph node involvement as shown in (D, E). **** indicates P < 0.0001, *** indicates 0.0001< P < 0.001, while ** indicates 0.001 < P < 0.01.