A research team led by Nuno Barbosa Morais, group leader at Instituto de Medicina Molecular João Lobo Antunes (iMM) in Lisbon, computationally analysed the expression of marker genes that are associated with a “fingerprint” of cancer cells in thousands of tumors and revealed its therapeutic potential in the fight against cancer. The study published today in PLoS Computational Biology shows the types of tumors in which these genes are most active and identifies drugs that can selectively eliminate cells that carry that label.