In the first, Hoos et al, studied 100 patients with lymph-node negative rectal cancer, and found an increased number of deaths in the patients with p53(+)/Bcl-2(-) tumors (7/33, 21.2%) compared with the p53(-)/Bcl-2(+) group (2/13, 15.4%) [13], and a recent study of 269 patients with Dukes stage A-D rectal cancer reported a lower rate of metastatic disease in p53(-)/Bcl-2(+) tumours, with p53(+)/Bcl-2(-) tumours showing a worse outcome [14]. The gene discussed is BCL2; the disease is metastatic neoplasm.