Fig 2: Dual-immunohistochemistry (IHC) and immunofluorescence (IF) staining on tissue microarray (TMA) slides. Dual-IHC and IF staining with primary antibodies of EpCAM and CD49f were performed on TMA tissue. (A) Patients only contain EpCAM-positive cancer cells (membrane); (B) Patient show only CD49f-positive cancer cells (cytoplasm); (C) Case express none or both (D) biomarkers. In IF staining (E-P), green signal shows the expression of CD49f, red signal shows EpCAM with DAPI staining for nuclei. (E-H) One case that tumor cell expression only EpCAM on the membrane (white arrows); (I-L) One case that tumor cell express only CD49f (red arrow); (M-P) One case with tumor cells express both (yellow arrow) (for both IHC and IF, magnification is actually ×400).

Fig 3: Prevalence of EpCAM-/CD49f+ with histopathologic characteristics. Analyzing of 150 breast cancer samples stratified to tumor size (A), node status (B), tumor grade (C; low=grade I and II, high=grade III), recurrence (D), distant metastasis (E), and estrogen receptor (ER) expression (F). Tumor containing EpCAM-/CD49f+ are associated with higher tumor grade (C; p=0.031) and distant metastasis (E; p=0.048). Chi-square exact and Fisher exact test were performed.