By integrating CTC analyses from a large cohort of breast cancer patients with mechanistic studies, our work reports what we believe to be a novel discovery of heterotypic CTC-WBC clusters containing a rare subset of DPT cells with unique features of exhaustion and immune suppression (TIM-3 and FoxP3), thereby fostering tumor pluripotency and immune evasion. The gene discussed is HAVCR2; the disease is neoplasm.