However, the qPCR results showed that although the increase in Il-12 was not statistically significant, the expression of the proinflammatory cytokines Il-6 and Tnf-α was significantly higher in the CAR-M group than in the GFP-M group, and both the GFP-M and CAR-M groups exhibited increased Il-6, Il-12 and Tnf-α expression after coculture of engineered macrophages with MC38-HER2 cells (Fig. 3C–E), demonstrating that the proinflammatory phenotype was triggered by the interaction between macrophages and tumor cells rather than by lentiviral infection. Here, TNF is linked to neoplasm.