While different types of cancer cell lines have been reported to undergo a range of responses to IL-4, including pro-survival, pro-apoptotic or mitogenic behaviours [16,17,19–21], we found that EV-AC2M2 and IL4-AC2M2 cells grew at indistinguishable rates (P=0.3654, Figure 1B), suggesting that they do not express 4 receptors and therefore display no apparent autocrine effects associated with IL-4 expression. Here, IL4 is linked to cancer.