In contrast, other studies found high MLKL activity associated with poor survival in patients with breast cancer or head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.36 37 Some of these discrepancies might be explained by the fact that most of the mentioned studies including our own were done from bulk tumor tissue samples, in which the source and main driver (cancer vs immune or stromal cells) of these gene expression profiles is unclear. Here, MLKL is linked to cancer.