MARCO, upregulated in response to pathogenic challenge (van der Laan et al., 1997), has been implicated in defence against pathogens in the lung (Arredouani et al., 2004), phagocytosis and clearance of tumour cells (Xing et al., 2021), internalisation of exosomes (Kanno et al., 2020), and has been touted as a potential target in anti-cancer immunotherapy (Eisinger et al., 2020). The gene discussed is MARCO; the disease is neoplasm.