In contrast to platinated compounds, FaDu and SCC35 cells with shRNA-mediated depletion of NSD1 became somewhat more resistant to several DNA damaging drugs, including zeocin, etoposide and paclitaxel (Fig. 10), while available databases of various cancer cell lines demonstrated that NSD1 mutation status did not alter response to the same treatment (Fig. 6 B). The gene discussed is NSD1; the disease is cancer.