Effects of Survivin on cell proliferation and apoptosis in MG-63 cells in vitro. Osteosarcoma is the most frequent primary malignant tumor of the skeleton and occurs mainly in children and adolescent. The prognosis of osteosarcoma is very poor due to its aggressive and no effective treatment. This study is the first to investigate the anti-cancer effects of antisense pEGFP-C1-Survivin on human osteosarcoma cells. It was shown in our results that Survivin blockaded could significantly induce apoptosis and inhibit the invasive of osteosarcoma cells line MG-63. The effects were probably produced by the decreased expression of Survivin induced by antisense pEGFP-C1-Survivin which was examined by RT-PCR and western blotting. All these suggested that Survivin should be very important in the development of osteosarcoma and Survivin blockaded by using antisense pEGFP-C1-Survivin could markedly inhibit the proliferation and invasion of osteosarcoma cells line MG-63, partially reversed their malignant phenotype. Targeting Survivin might be a promising option in the treatment of osteosarcoma.