While an autocrine/paracrine TNFα loop has been demonstrated to mediate cell death in response to Smac mimetics alone and in combination with chemotherapeutic drugs in a variety of cancers [12, 16, 21–24], in our present study TNFα turned out to be dispensable for both DOX/BV6- and VCR/BV6-mediated apoptosis. Here, TNF is linked to cancer.