We used the Survivin/BIRC5 promoter to drive the transcription of alpha4 gene, encoding for the essential ICP4 viral protein of HSV-1, to evaluate whether the replacement of the endogenous promoter with the −260/−1 fragment of Survivin/BIRC5 would restrict the replication of the novel herpesvirus to cancer cell lines. This evidence concerns the gene BIRC5 and cancer.