IL6 and colonic neoplasm: While numerous reports have characterized the contribution of inflammatory cytokines (i.e., IL-6, TNFalpha) and their downstream transcription factors (NFkappaB, STAT3) in the development of inflammation-associated colon cancer (reviewed in [42,46,48,52,54,55,56]), limited data is available regarding the effect of altered levels of Sdc1 on the pathogenesis of colitis-associated tumors.