The response we observed upon interaction with F. nucleatum differs from the canonical inhibition of immune activity observed between immune cells and cancer cells (25) but is consistent with in vivo work using ApcMin/+ model reporting that F. nucleatum induced expression of the genes encoding several pro-inflammatory cytokines, including TNFα, IL-6, IL-8 and IL-1β (12) which mirrors human RNA-seq data from patients bearing high F. nucleatum loads in their colorectal tumours (12). Here, IL6 is linked to cancer.