Although our model is the first to show the importance of E- and P-selectins in spontaneous metastasis formation, in which the metastatic tumour cell has to undergo the complete metastatic cascade, earlier models focused on the prevention of dissemination, that is, the lodging of intravenously injected tumour cells in P-selectin-deficient mice (Kim et al, 1998) or by blocking E-selectin using cimetidine (Kobayashi et al, 2000). This evidence concerns the gene SELE and neoplasm.