A new Weld of research was recently opened by the discovery that several tumor suppressors and proto-oncogenes aVect the production of ribosomes (Ruggero and PandolW 2003) . rRNA synthesis is enhanced by c-Myc (Arabi et al. 2005) and it was proposed that this stimulation is a key pathway driving cell growth and tumorigenesis (Grandori et al. 2005) . On the contrary, the decrease of ribosome production induces apoptosis in a p53-dependent or independent manner (David-Pfeuty et al. 2001; Pestov et al. 2001) and the disruption of the nucleolus mediates p53 stabilization (Rubbi and Milner 2003) . The cross talk between the p53 pathway and the nucleolus is at least in part mediated by localization of Mdm2 in the nucleolus, an E3 ubiquitin ligase involved in p53 degradation. Nucleostemin, a nucleolar protein discovered in stem cells and in cancer cells interacts with p53 McKay 2005, 2002) . It was proposed that nucleostemin might regulate p53 function through shuttling between the nucleolus and the nucleoplasm. The major nucleolar protein B23 is directly implicated in cancer pathogenesis as demonstrated by mutation of the gene in a number of hematological disorders (Grisendi et al. 2005) . Importantly, in acute promyelocytic leukemia, the fusion protein NPM/RAR localizes in the nucleolus indicating a role of this nucleolar protein in this disease (Rego et al. 2006 ).