As an important anti-inflammatory protein in the MyD88 pathway, targeting of IRAK-M is a potential way of boosting the immune system in patients with bacterial infection, immunoparalysis or cancer, since IRAK-M targeting in animal models of these diseases improves outcome (Kobayashi et al., 2002; Deng et al., 2006; Hubbard et al., 2010; Hoogerwerf et al., 2012; van der Windt et al., 2012). The gene discussed is IRAK3; the disease is cancer.