c-MET-positive circulating tumor cells and cell-free DNA as independent prognostic factors in hormone receptor-positive/HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer.

"Declarations Ethics approval and consent to participateThe study protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the SMC (IRB No. 2019-08-119) and was conducted per the Declaration of Helsinki. Written informed consent was obtained from all the patients. Consent for publicationNot applicable. Competing interestsJieun Park and Young Kee Shin received consulting fees from ABION, Inc. Na Young Kim and Young Kee Shin currently hold stocks at ABION, Inc. Mi-Ran Kang currently holds stocks at Gencurix Inc. The other authors declare no potential conflicts of interest relevant to this study. Competing interests Jieun Park and Young Kee Shin received consulting fees from ABION, Inc. Na Young Kim and Young Kee Shin currently hold stocks at ABION, Inc. Mi-Ran Kang currently holds stocks at Gencurix Inc. The other authors declare no potential conflicts of interest relevant to this study."

"Funding This research was supported by Grants from the Korea Health Technology R&D Project through the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) funded by the Ministry of Health & Welfare (HI19C0141; to ES Chang, M Sung, JY Song, K Jung, and YL Choi), Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (2022R1A6A1A03046247; to YK Shin), NRF Grant funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (2022R1A2C2006322; to ES Chang, M Sung, JY Song, K Jung, and YL Choi), and Future Medicine 20*30 Project of the Samsung Medical Center (#SMO1230021; to YL Choi), Republic of Korea."