Recently family of the Snail transcription factors (Slug and/or Snail) has been found to repress E-cadherin and contribute to tumour progression in various malignancies such as hepatocellular carcinoma (Sugimachi et al, 2003; Miyoshi et al, 2004), breast carcinoma (Hajra et al, 2002), melanoma (Poser et al, 2001), oral squamous cell carcinoma (Yokoyama et al, 2001), and oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma (Uchikado et al, 2005). The gene discussed is SNAI1; the disease is neoplasm.