Consistent with this role are the observations that siRNA-mediated knock-down of DFNA5 in non-malignant breast epithelial cell lines enhances colony numbers, colony size and cell growth (Kim et al., 2008b), while forced expression of DFNA5 in gastric cancer cell lines suppresses colony formation (Akino et al., 2007). This evidence concerns the gene GSDME and gastric cancer.