There are some examples of apparent down-regulation of USP16 in cancer (Fernandez et al., 2004; Gelsi-Boyer et al., 2008; Qian et al., 2016) but USP16 mutation is rare in primary cancers (data from TCGA Project17) which may be consistent with its important role in the cell cycle and DNA repair, and a reason why it has been considered as a cancer drug target. This evidence concerns the gene USP16 and cancer.