Although the population in our study was skewed to male smokers with squamous cell carcinoma, our results warrant further investigation to confirm their applicability to other histological subsets of NSCLC, In order to shed further light on these issues, we are planning to examine BRCA1, ERCC1, MZF1 and RRM1 expression in 200 tumor specimens from the ANITA study[3] and in 620 patients included in the Spanish Lung Cancer Group NATCH trial of neoadjuvant vs adjuvant chemotherapy vs surgery alone. The gene discussed is ERCC1; the disease is neoplasm.