“…Indeed, we have found relatively high levels of expression of this gene in several colon, esophageal and breast cancer cell lines and in a subset of primary colon and breast carcinomas Sgambato et al, 1997;Ciaparrone et al, 1998). At the same time, several recent studies indicate that absent or low levels of expression of p27 in a subset of cancers of the colon, breast, lung, esophagus, stomach and prostate are associated with cases that have a poor prognosis Fredersdorf et al, 1997;Catzavelos et al, 1997;Porter et al, 1997;Esposito and Baldi et al, 1997;Mori et al, 1997;Singh et al, 1998;Yang et al, 1988). It is of interest that the expression of p27 is regulated mainly at the post-translational level via a ubiquitin-proteasome mediated proteolysis mechanism and the decreased levels in a subset of cancers appear to be due to enhanced activity of this proteolytic system (Pagano et al, 1995;Loda et al, 1997;Esposito and Baldi, 1997).…”