Our ex vivo study using leukemia cells of AML patients identified RANK as potent influencer of cellular function and thus potential target for therapeutic approaches: upon RANK stimulation we observed induction of the cytokines IL-6, IL-8, TNF and IL-10, which can act as autocrine/paracrine growth and survival factors in AML and contribute to disease pathophysiology [35,36,37,38]. Here, TNF is linked to acute myeloid leukemia.