Chang et al (2004) showed that reduced expression of CTGF was associated with advanced-stage disease, lymph node metastasis and shorter median survival in lung adenocarcinoma. Furthermore, invasive and metastatic activity was lower in tumour cells that were engineered to overexpress CTGF. Although no specific functional data are available, Mok et al (1994) identified DOC1 (downregulated in ovarian cancer) using a DNA-fingerprinting approach to find genes differentially expressed between ovarian cancer cells and normal ovarian epithelial cells. Here, CCN2 is linked to neoplasm.