C3 and cancer: As observed in the representative case BC-P1 (Fig. 1d), we identified a strong conservation of the housekeeping gene ACTB, cancer/epithelial cells (EPCAM; clusters c1, c5, c13, c20 and c14), myoepithelial cells (KRT14; c6), T cells (CD3D; c3, c7 and c17), B-cells (MS4A1; c16), plasmablasts (JCHAIN; c18), myeloid cells (CD68; c12 and c21), endothelial (PECAM1; c0, c8, c9, c11, c15 and c22), perivascular cells (PDGFRB; c2) and cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs; PDGFRA; c4 and c10) (Fig. 1b, d; Additional file 2: Figure S2a; Additional file 3).