Through protein–protein interaction analysis based on ADSC secretome, we identified specific ligand-receptor interaction pairs—FGFR1-FGF2 and CSF1R-CSF1 (Supplementary Fig. 4), which play essential roles in the activation of PI3K–AKT signaling pathway in cancer progression, interaction with cancer-associated fibroblasts, therapy resistance, and epithelial-mesenchymal transition [22, 35–37]. Here, FGF2 is linked to cancer.