TNF and colorectal cancer: To investigate whether FDLE could modulate the response of human colorectal cancer cell lines to mixtures of TNF-α, IFN-γ and LPS, the mRNA expression of TNF-α, IL-1β and IL-6 in HT-29 and HCT-116 in human colorectal cancer cell lines treated by a combination of cytokines was then measured and shown in Fig. 4c,d.