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Article History

Received: 15 June 2020

Revised: 2 February 2021

Accepted: 15 February 2021

First Online: 24 March 2021

Ethics approval and consent to participate

: Blood samples were obtained with patient informed consent approved by the institutional review board (protocol EKNZ BASEC 2016-00067, approved by the EKNZ, Ethics Committee northwest/central Switzerland) and conducted according to good clinical practice guidelines. Healthy donor blood was purchased from the Blutspendezentrum SRK beider Basel upon written informed consent of anonymous healthy volunteers.

: Not applicable.

: The supporting data used in this manuscript can be requested and will be provided by the corresponding author, Prof. Nicola Aceto.

: N.A. is listed as an inventor in patent applications related to circulating tumour cells and is a paid consultant for companies with an interest in liquid biopsy. W.P.W. received research support from Takeda Pharmaceuticals International via the Swiss Group for Clinical Cancer Research (SAKK) and honoraria from Genomic Health, Inc., USA. The University of Basel and University Hospital Basel received funding for conferences and meetings from Sandoz, Genomic Health, Medtronic, Novartis Oncology, Pfizer and Eli Lilly. P.M. is founder and shareholder of Tethis S.p.A.. R.C, S.P., M.DeM., G.S., G.M.F., A.Z., M.R., A.C., G.G., D.S., L.M. and C.D. are (or were at the time of manuscript preparation) consultants, employees or directors of Tethis S.p.A. None of the remaining authors have relevant conflict of interest to report.

: Research in the Aceto lab is supported by the European Research Council (678834 and 840636), the European Union (801159-B2B), the Swiss National Science Foundation (PP0P3_163938, PP00P3_190077, IZLIZ3_182962), the Swiss Cancer League (KFS-3811-02-2016, KLS-4222-08-2017, KLS-4834-08-2019), the Basel Cancer League (KLbB-4173-03-2017, KLbB-4763-02-2019), the two Cantons of Basel through the ETH Zürich (PMB-01-16), and the University of Basel, Switzerland. F.D.S. is supported by fellowships from the Freie Akademische Gesellschaft (Basel, Switzerland), the Gottfried und Julia Bangerter-Rhyner Stiftung (Basel, Switzerland) and the Giuliana and Giorgio Stefanini Foundation (Wilen SZ, Switzerland). Open Access funding provided by ETH Zurich and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich.