J. Exp. Med. doi:10.1084/jem.20100050 (2010)

Inflammation is getting the blame for a growing number of ills, including tumour development. An oft-cited example is the link between ulcerative colitis and colon cancer. But new findings complicate the picture: three key proteins that form part of the inflammasome — a protein complex that triggers inflammatory responses — actually protect against colitis and the cancer it can induce.

Jenny P.-Y. Ting and her co-workers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill induced colitis in mice in which the gene for the protein NLRP3, PYCARD or caspase-1 had been knocked out. The mice showed heightened disease and a greater incidence of cancer.