Whilst mice deficient in OGG1 only display moderate increases in spontaneous mutation rates associated with accumulation of 8-oxoguanine (Klungland et al., 1999; Minowa et al., 2000; Sakumi et al., 2003), altered OGG1 protein expression and activity has been observed in a number of different cancer cell types, including prostate, head and neck squamous cell carcinoma and colorectal cancer (Kondo et al., 2000; Trzeciak et al., 2004; Paz-Elizur et al., 2006; Kumar et al., 2012). Here, OGG1 is linked to cancer.