The P2X7 receptor, with its wide-ranging proposed physiological roles in inflammatory disease, cancer, neurological disorders (Bartlett et al., 2014; Roger et al., 2015; Pevarello et al., 2017) and, most recently, metabolic disease (Arguin et al., 2017), has been a focus within the pharmaceutical industry and several potent and selective P2X7 antagonists have been developed (Park and Kim, 2017). This evidence concerns the gene P2RX7 and cancer.