While DNA damage-driven GAS-STING cell-intrinsic engagement in cancer cells has been shown to be involved in the recruitment of immune cells to promote anti-cancer activities, through the engagement of the IRF3/IFN-β arm (Ho et al., 2016; Takashima et al., 2016; Harding et al., 2017; Vanpouille-Box et al., 2017; Yamazaki et al., 2020; Suter et al., 2021; Tian et al., 2021), there is also evidence that chronic activation of the pathway can drive tumorigenesis and metastasis (Ahn et al., 2014; Lemos et al., 2016; Bakhoum et al., 2018). The gene discussed is IRF3; the disease is cancer.