Fig. 6

a Representative phase contrast images of unstimulated and flow-stimulated MDA-MB-231 cells adhering to an endothelial monolayer at several time points. MDA-MB-231 cells present with light grey nuclei while endothelial cells present with dark grey nuclei. The phase contrast images are representative of 4 independent experiments with similar results. Scale bars = 80 µm. Relative adhesion of flow-stimulated (black line) and unstimulated (grey line) cells in flow (b) and static (c) adhesion studies. Relative adhesion is defined as average number of adhered cancer cells per endothelial cells in a field. Results in the graphs are expressed as mean ± SE (**, P < 0.01; ***, P < 0.001). Heat maps of differentially expressed cell adhesion genes (fold change ≥ 2 and p ≤ 0.01) between static and flow-exposed MDA-MB-231 (d) and MCF-7 (e) breast cancer cells. f Comparison of migration and invasion of flow-stimulated and unstimulated MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells in transwell assays. Cells in 3 random microscopic fields were counted for each group. The results presented are an average of three random microscopic fields from three independent experiments