TNF and gastric cancer: TNF-α is a key pro-inflammatory cytokine that is elevated in human gastric cancer and promotes tumor progression through multiple mechanisms including epithelial-mesenchymal transition, angiogenesis, and immune suppression (Zhou et al., 2020; Oshima et al., 2014; Lv et al., 2019); its protective deletion in this model underscores its pathogenic role in gastric carcinogenesis.