In addition, the levels of inflammatory factors (e.g. IL-6, IL-1α, IL-1β and TNF-α) that have been reported to be released during pyroptotic cell death11,41,42 and the levels of CXCL9 and CXCL10, which have been reported to recruit effector T cells into the tumour microenvironment43, were significantly increased in PJA1-knockdown NPC cells (Supplementary Fig. 6c). Here, IL6 is linked to neoplasm.