The centromeric H3 variant CENPA [190,191,192,193,194] and its cognate chaperone HJURP [195,196,197,198,199,200,201] are overexpressed, usually in a mutually exclusive fashion, in several cancer types including lung, colon, prostate, breast, and brain tumors, where their overexpression correlates with poor prognosis. The gene discussed is CENPA; the disease is cancer.