Because genome-wide studies reported that the NLRP3 locus is amplified in BC (Kan et al, 2010), we investigated whether NLRP3 was differentially expressed in human immortalized mammary epithelial cells (HMECs) at different stages of transformation (R. Weinsberg’s model Fig S1C) versus cancer cells (Elenbaas et al, 2001; Morel et al, 2008). Here, NLRP3 is linked to cancer.