TP53 and cancer: In p53 knockout apoptosis-resistant cancer cells, taxol and etoposide known for inducing cancer cell death via the p53 pathway independent of autophagy (Xie et al., 2011; Peng et al., 2014), the differences in their mean IC50 value between the p53-deficient and wild-type HCT-116 cells were significantly higher (14.45- and 3.14-fold) (Figure 7C).