MTT proliferation and colony suppression assays demonstrated that all the chemotherapeutic drugs used significantly reduced HK-2 cell proliferation rate, but had no effect at all on both RCC-Shaw and UOK-257, which have in common inactivated p53, the first due to TRIM8 deficit, the second to a mutation in the TP53 gene itself (Fig. 6a-c - Additional file 7: Figure S6g-i). This evidence concerns the gene TRIM8 and renal cell carcinoma.