Masui et al (2001) have reported that METH-1 appears to be involved in the progression of pancreatic cancer while METH-2 was not expressed. To date, to our knowledge, there is no specific report on the involvement of these genes in lung cancer. However, METH-2 was highlighted in our previous study (Heighway et al, 2002) in which a panel of cDNA microarrays comprising 47 650 transcript elements was used to analyse gene expression patterns in 39 ressected primary human non-small-cell lung tumours that were compared to paired normal lung tissues. Here, ADAMTS8 is linked to familial pancreatic carcinoma.