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 tumours and revealed its therapeutic potential in the fight against cancer. The study published in the scientific journal PLoS Computational Biology shows the types of tumours in which these genes are most active and identifies drugs with the potential to selectively eliminate cells that carry that label.