Primary functions involved in the top gene network were cancer, cell death, and neurological disease, with transforming growth factor β1 (TGF-β1) as the core molecule (Additional file2) TGF-β1 was found to be highly upregulated in the CTC fraction compared to the T, P, and G fractions, with a fold change (FC) of 3.18, 3.33, and 2.16, respectively. Here, TGFB1 is linked to cancer.