BIRC6 and neoplasm: As earlier evidence points to the possibility of improving the activity of specific anticancer drugs through Apollon knockdown (Chen et al, 1999; Chu et al, 2008), such a chemosensitising effect could be exploited for the design of more effective therapies with Apollon inhibitors combined with anticancer drugs to be used in the clinic, after a preclinical validation of the most appropriate ways of combining the different agents in chemoresistant tumour models.