To test our hypothesis that it is autophagy that protects ER+ breast cancer cells from palbociclib-induced senescence at low doses, we first downregulated two crucial autophagy genes, Beclin-1 and Atg-5 (refs 29, 30) (Fig. 2a and Supplementary Fig. 7a). The gene discussed is BECN1; the disease is breast carcinoma.