Fig. 1

Molecular characterization of BRC cell lines established from primary human breast tumors. a Clustering of BRC explants with 51 established human breast cancer cell lines using a 305-gene subtype prediction signature. BRC cell populations are highlighted in red and the intrinsic subtype is indicated as basal A, basal B or luminal. b Gene expression data from the Affymetrix microarray for specific genes including: erbb2, epidermal growth factor receptor (egfr), progesterone receptor (pr) and estrogen receptor (esr1). c Gene expression data from the Affymetrix microarray for epithelial and mesenchymal markers including: E-cadherin (cdh1), N-cadherin (cdh2), fibronectin (fn1), cytokeratin 8 (krt8) and vimentin (vim). d The percentage of mice with mammary tumors 9 weeks following mammary fat pad injection. e Tumor growth of BRC cell lines injected into the mammary fat pad of athymic mice. Mean tumor size for each cell line is plotted each week and the error bars represent the SEM. Statistical comparison is between BRC-31 and all other BRC-cell lines, *P < 0.01 (f) Immunoblot analysis of the original five breast cancer cell lines and their corresponding tumor explants (a or b) from four of the five cell lines. Representative blots from one of three independent sets of lysates are shown. α-Tubulin served as a loading control