MIF and metastatic malignant neoplasm in the lymph nodes: [43] With observations that the high-expression of MIF and IL-8 was significantly associated with increased lymph node metastasis in NPC patients and exogenous MIF treatment alone could upregulate IL-8 secretion in CNE-1 and CNE-2 NPC cells in vitro, Liao et al. inferred that MIF contributed to lymph node metastasis by upregulating IL-8 expression.