IL6 and neoplasm: In the inflammatory tumor microenvironment (TME), innate immune cells such as monocytes and adaptive immune cells (e.g., T lymphocytes) directly contact or produce a variety of inflammatory mediators [e.g., tumor necrosis factor (TNF), IL-6] in response to aberrant signals from the tumor (Wang et al., 2019; Sahai et al., 2020).