Nevertheless, in contrast to BSI low/Bcl-2− or + individuals showing essentially no difference for long-term survival (5-year OS 61.4 vs 59.5%), patients with the BSI high/Bcl-2− phenotype, as depicted in Figure 4, had an excellent outcome that was moderately better as compared to BSI high/Bcl-2+ cases (5-year OS 87.1 vs 73.1%), but the shift of the BAX to Bcl-2 ratio in favour of the BSI high/Bcl-2− phenotype did not translate into a statistically significant difference for clinical outcome in our series of cytotoxically treated stage III colon cancer (OS, P=0.2). The gene discussed is BAX; the disease is malignant colon neoplasm.