BIRC8 and nasopharyngeal carcinoma: Gene expression profiling also revealed that silencing of ARHGEF3 resulted in downregulation of a number of genes, most notably BIRC8. Further, we did observe a significant positive correlation between expression of ARHGEF3 and BIRC8 in our large cohort of NPC clinical tissues.BIRC8 (ILP-2) belongs to the inhibitors of apoptosis protein (IAP) family, which are apoptosis inhibitors that may protect against apoptotic stimuli and suppress apoptosis [26].