As has been shown before by multiple groups, survivin/BIRC5 is one of the few genes whose expression is transcriptionally repressed by direct binding of wildtype p53 to the survivin/BIRC5 promoter, and activation of wildtype p53 leads to cell cycle arrest or apoptotic cell death in cancer cells9,10,41, whereas knockdown of p53 leads to increased survivin mRNA expression (Supplemental Fig. 2). Here, BIRC5 is linked to cancer.