STING1 and neoplasm: Eggert et al. (2016) showed that while the CCL2–CCR2 axis helps senescent hepatocyte clearance to reduce hepatocellular carcinomas in the early stages of tumorigenesis, it imposes an immunosuppressive effect and supports tumor growth by inhibiting NK cell-mediated killing in later stages of cancer progression. Immune-suppressive M2 tumor-associated macrophages can be polarized by microparticles derived from tumor cells, and this M2 polarization depends on the cGAS–STING–TBK1–STAT6 axis in macrophages (Ma et al., 2016).