In clinical samples, a high expression of survivin in malignant tumour cells has been reported to correlate with a shorter survival (Ferrandina et al, 2005; Lee et al, 2005; Atikcan et al, 2006; Sohn et al, 2006) and we also previously showed the survivin expression to be a significant prognostic marker for malignant gliomas (Kajiwara et al, 2003; Saito et al, 2007). The gene discussed is BIRC5; the disease is neoplasm.