IL6 and cancer: Independent of these discoveries, CD44high/CD24low cells, which show a stem cell-like phenotype, are enriched in highly metastatic breast cancer cells (basal or claudin-low breast subtypes) have been proposed to be resistant to cancer therapies through activation of the PI3K/AKT pathway, IL-6/JAK2/STAT3 pathway, and EMT [8, 43–47].