Analyses of mRNA isolated from matched pairs of samples of normal kidney and AML tumour (n = 7 cases) from paraffin-embedded tissue revealed that all AMLs expressed similar or higher levels of proximal tubule marker genes (FMO1, CUBN, VIL1) and several transcription factor-encoding genes identified from our mouse studies (TAL1, HNF4A, TFEC) as normal kidney (Fig. 6b). This evidence concerns the gene TFEC and acute myeloid leukemia.