TIMP1 and cancer: Lissat et al. (2015) showed that high expression of IL6ST aids Ewing sarcoma tumor progression and renders it resistant to apoptosis and promotes metastasis, thus suggesting that IL6ST plays a role in cancer metastasis. TIMP1 promotes melanoma through activation of the AKT pathway independent of the PI3K signaling pathway (Toricelli et al., 2013). In human melanoma cell lines, TIMP interacts with ITGB1 and CD63 and assists melanomagenesis and resistance to the cell death program (Toricelli et al., 2013).