IL6 and hepatocellular carcinoma: To determine which component secreted by TREM2+ macrophages causes the malignant progression of HCC, we conducted an intersection of the genes whose expression was upregulated in WT BMDMs compared with Trem2−/− BMDMs according to RNA sequencing (Fig. 6A), the predicted secreted proteins obtained from the HPA database, and the curated proteins regulating glycolysis, which revealed three overlapping candidate genes, namely, IL1B, IL6, and WNT6 (Fig. 6B).