EPCAM and neoplasm: We used scRNA-seq to study EPCAM-enriched epithelial cell subsets from early-stage LUAD samples from 16 patients and 47 paired NL samples spanning a topographical continuum from the LUADs, that is, tumour-adjacent, tumour-intermediate and tumour-distant locations15 (Fig. 1a, Supplementary Fig. 1 and Supplementary Tables 1 and 2).