We had already shown that the variant genotype was associated with lower response rates of patients treated for breast cancer in the neoadjuvant setting with the FEC combination (fluorouracil, epirubicin, cyclophosphamide), which was not observed for patients treated with a taxane–epirubicin combination.6 We show here, in a prospective clinical study dedicated to pharmacogenetics, that the overall survival of patients with advanced head-and-neck cancer could also be dependent upon CYP1B1 polymorphism. Here, CYP1B1 is linked to head and neck cancer.