Fig. 3. Spontaneously metastasizing tumor cells survive significantly longer at the secondary site compared to intravenously injected tumor cells.

a Representative intravital microscopy images showing the possible fates of extravascular disseminated tumor cells in the lung parenchyma. Top: Images of disseminated tumor cells just after extravasation. Bottom left: Example of an extravascular tumor cell, which has died, as evidenced by small extravascular apoptotic bodies (yellow arrow). Bottom middle: Example of an extravascular tumor cell that survived as a single and solitary tumor cell over time. Bottom right: Example of an extravascular tumor cell that began to divide and grow into a micro-metastasis. Red = tdTomato labeled endothelial cells and 155 kDa Tetramethylrhodamine dextran labeled blood serum, Green = GFP labeled tumor cells. Yellow dashed lines delineate blood vessel boundaries. Scale bar = 15 μm. b Percentage of extravascular E0771-GFP disseminated tumor cells that died, survived, or grew after extravasation in EM and SM models 64 hrs after arrival to the lung vasculature. EM: n = 27 tumor cells in 4 mice. SM: n = 31 tumor cells in 4 mice. Bar = mean. Error bars = ±SEM. For Died and Survived columns, a two-tailed unpaired t-test was used (p = 0.0003 and 0.0005, respectively). For Grew columns, a two-tailed Mann-Whitney test was used (p = 0.14). ***p < 0.001. ns = not significant. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.