Tumorigenesis: Transcriptional elongation and cancer

It is well established that deregulation of transcription can cause cancer, and the protein products of many oncogenes, proto-oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes are transcription factors. It has been assumed that the deregulation would occur at the level of initiation, the first step in transcription and the one that has commanded most attention. However, two recent findings call that assumption into question by showing that the deregulation can also occur at the level of transcriptional elongation.