Consistent with the results from colon cancer cell lines in vitro, studies performed by Ishiguro et al. (2000)in vivo revealed that mice inoculated subcutaneously with HT29 colon cancer cells and treated with the antisense oligonucleotide to knockdown ATF3 expression survived longer than did the control mice, owing to the inhibition of tumor growth and metastasis. Here, ATF3 is linked to colonic neoplasm.