FOXO3 and cancer: As depicted in Fig. 5, leptin treatment increased FoxO3A protein expression in a time-dependent manner (Fig. 5A) and FoxO3A gene silencing inhibited leptin-induced LC3II protein expression both in HepG2 (Fig. 5B) and MCF-7 cells (Fig. 5C), suggesting that FoxO3A signaling is implicated in leptin-induced autophagy in cancer cells.