Interestingly, rather than protecting against chemotherapeutic cell killing, the suppression of p53 through shRNA knoc kdown or chemical inhibition by Pifithrin-α resulted in a significant increase in cell death by either VMY or doxorubicin, suggesting that p53 acts as a chemoprotective protein in these primitive neuroectoderm-derived cancer cells. Here, TP53 is linked to cancer.