Contrary to other studies (Barton et al, 2004; Pedranzini et al, 2004), we did not find decreased tumour cell numbers upon STAT3 downregulation (Figure 3); this may be due to the incomplete nature of such interventions (although the other studies suffered from similar nonquantitative abrogation), high levels of autocrine EGFR signalling overcoming this limitation via other pathways, or likely the shorter time course of our experiments. The gene discussed is STAT3; the disease is neoplasm.