About the Authors

Angel E. Dago

Contributed equally to this work with: Angel E. Dago, Asya Stepansky

Affiliation Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, United States of America

Asya Stepansky

Contributed equally to this work with: Angel E. Dago, Asya Stepansky

Affiliations Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, New York, United States of America, Skyline Genomics, Roslyn Heights, New York, United States of America

Anders Carlsson

Affiliation Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, United States of America

Madelyn Luttgen

Affiliation Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, United States of America

Jude Kendall

Affiliations Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, New York, United States of America, Skyline Genomics, Roslyn Heights, New York, United States of America

Timour Baslan

Affiliations Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, New York, United States of America, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York, United States of America

Anand Kolatkar

Affiliation Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, United States of America

Michael Wigler

Affiliation Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, New York, United States of America

Kelly Bethel

Affiliations Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, United States of America, Department of Pathology, Scripps Clinic, La Jolla, California, United States of America

Mitchell E. Gross

Affiliation Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

James Hicks

pkuhn@usc.edu (PK); hicks@cshl.edu (JH)

Affiliation Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, New York, United States of America

Peter Kuhn

pkuhn@usc.edu (PK); hicks@cshl.edu (JH)

Affiliation Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have read the journal's policy and have conflicts to disclose. The HD-CTC assay technology described here has been licensed to Epic Sciences. ML, AK, KB and PK have ownership interests in Epic Sciences. AS is an employee of Skyline Genomics, and had a significant role in developing the protocol for isolating DNA from HD-CTC cells and performed the Illumina library preparations. AS did not have any role in design of the experiments or interpretation of the data. JH is a co-founder and shareholder in skyline genomics. AED, AC, JK, TB, MW and MEG and have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: AED MEG JH PK. Performed the experiments: AED AS. Analyzed the data: AED AC MEG JK JH PK. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: AS AC ML JK AK TB MW KB. Wrote the paper: AED AC MEG JH PK.