EPCAM and breast cancer: First, we screened a panel of breast cancer drivers and markers gene that have been used for breast cancer detection (EGFR, EpCAM, KRT19, MUC1, IL6R, GLI3) [25] using a nested qPCR protocol against BM cells from healthy donors that had been spiked with the TN breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-231 or the ER+PR+ line MCF-7 at 1, 5, 50 spiked breast cancer cells in 1 million nucleated BM cells.