Importantly, our observation that normal or non-transformed breast epithelial cells do not exhibit similar changes in cell growth or survival after ectopic expression of VGLL4 suggest that VGLL4 represents a unique class of cancer-specific growth-arresting and apoptosis-inducing genes, that may prove efficacious for the targeted therapy of breast cancer. The gene discussed is VGLL4; the disease is breast carcinoma.