On Jan. 21, 2019, researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center announced finding a way to essentially smother cancer cells in their sleep, preventing them from ever waking up and forming deadly metastatic tumors.

The team focused on the most common type of breast cancer, estrogen-receptor positive (or ER+), which comes back as metastatic disease five or more years after treatment in up to 17 percent of early-stage patients. In comparison, the metastatic recurrence rate for all breast cancer patients is thought to be between 20 and 30 percent.

The paper, published in Nature Cell Biology, was the culmination of more than four years’ work and proposes both a paradigm shift in how we view dormant disseminated tumor cells – and a new therapy to potentially slay this sleeping giant.