Fig. 2

Phenotypic heterogeneity of luminal breast cancer cells. a CD44 expression in neo-adjuvant AI-treated patients (pre- and post- treatment; p-value from two-tailed paired t test). b Same as (a), but in matched AI-treated primary-metastatic (p-value from Wilcoxon signed-rank test). c Reconstitution experiments from sorted MCF7-CD44^GFP-high or MCF7-CD44^GFP-low cells, or the full population. d Same as (c), but using sorted LTED-CD44^GFP-high or LTED-CD44^GFP-low cells, or the full population. e Survival curves of MCF7-CD44^GFP-high and MCF7-CD44^GFP-low cells in oestrogen-deprived (-E2) conditions. f Single-cell plating experiments in oestrogen-supplemented (+E2) or deprived conditions (−E2) for 30 days. From top to the bottom: (i) schematic representation of the results; (ii) representative pictures of single wells after 30 days (scale bar = 1000 μm); (iii) immunofluorescence staining highlighting CD44 expression (scale bar = 200 μm); (iv) summary statistics. g Cell-cycle dynamics of MCF7-CD44^GFP-high and MCF7-CD44^GFP-low cells inferred from time-lapse imaging. The length of the cell cycle and percentage of cell entering the cell cycle are indicated for both oestrogen-supplemented (+E2; top) and deprived conditions (−E2; bottom)