With respect to apoptosis- and hypoxia-driven tumour progression, we did not find important effects related to the mutational status of TP53. However, apoptotic levels were lower in BNIP3-expressing tumours, when compared with tumours with epigenetically silenced BNIP3 (P=0.004), which is somewhat surprising given the fact that functional BNIP3 is thought to induce cell death downstream of hypoxia inducible transcription factors. This evidence concerns the gene TP53 and neoplasm.