A preliminary study revealed that treatment of 2D-cultured DU145 and HeLa cancer cells with dNSurR9-C84A for 24 h induced caspase-3-associated apoptosis, whereas similar treatment did not effect survivin-independent human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) (Additional file 2) [28]. This evidence concerns the gene BIRC5 and cancer.