To this end a recent series of clinicopathological studies have determined that the upregulation of caveolin-1 is indeed associated with tumour progression and/or poor prognosis in several distinct cancers such as adenocarcinomas of the prostate (Yang et al, 1999), lung (Ho et al, 2002), pancreas (Ho et al, 2002) and squamous cell carcinoma of the oesophagous (Ho et al, 2002). Here, CAV1 is linked to cancer.