Background: Cancer is an extremely heterogeneous disease, both intra and inter cancer types. In this work we aim to establish common patterns in Breast, Kidney and Lung cancers at the signaling pathways and functional level which give rise to the generic microenvironment of cancer, as well as determine cancer-specific pathways and functions related to each disease.

Results: After a tumor vs. normal tissue comparison of the levels of activation of the signaling pathways and cell functions, we found a significant number of common subpathways and functions related to the three studied tumors. Also common survival mechanisms were established. Cancer-specific features which are only significant in one of the tumors have been determined.

Conclusions: The joint analysis of these different cancer datasets reported an appreciable number of common functional features, some of them related at the same time to survival in two of the three analyzed cancers. On the other hand, tumor-specific subpathways and functions have been determined, allowing a better understanding of the specificity of each cancer.