These functions include proteolytic activity to facilitate the pro-inflammatory activity of IL-1a, which is implicated in the ability of M-MDSCs to promote EMT of cancer cells, and to cleave extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins, a function usually linked to MMPs and implicated in the ability of PMN-MDSCs to enable cancer cell colonization in distant organs [4,16,17,18,19,20]. The gene discussed is IL1A; the disease is cancer.