Very little information is currently available with regard to the correlation of Ep-CAM expression with survival and tumour staging for colon and lung cancers, while more recent studies have explored larger sample numbers of gastric (Songun et al, 2005) and prostate cancers (Poczatek et al, 1999; Zellweger et al, 2005) for Ep-CAM expression. The gene discussed is EPCAM; the disease is prostate cancer.