Furthermore, prior work from our group has revealed that CAF-derived IL-6 engages in tumor-permissive crosstalk by activating STAT3 signaling within tumor cells (Nagathihalli et al., 2016), and that heightened CAF-tumor cell IL-6/STAT-3 signaling crosstalk is a central mediator of chemoresistance in PDAC (Dosch et al., 2021). Here, IL6 is linked to neoplasm.