It has been well documented that systemic TGF-β antagonism mainly targets CD8+ T cells in cancer (Nam et al, 2008) and selective blockade of TGF-β signalling in pan T cells or CD8+ T cells is sufficient to eradicate tumours (Donkor et al, 2011; Gorelik & Flavell, 2001; Zhang et al, 2005). Here, TGFB1 is linked to cancer.