Inflammation and Cancer: IL-6 and STAT3 Complete the Link

There is growing evidence that tumors are sustained and promoted by inflammatory signals from the surrounding microenvironment. Two papers by Grivennikov et al. and Bollrath et al. in this issue of Cancer Cell demonstrate the importance of the interleukin-6 family of proinflammatory cytokines and their downstream effector STAT3 in colitis-associated colon cancer.