The rationale that ATG4 proteins might be therapeutic targets mostly stems from the fact that these proteins are highly over-expressed in some cancer types compared to non-cancerous cells (Costa et al., 2016) and genetic inhibition of ATG4B either through siRNA or use of a dominant negative form of the gene show some benefit in chronic myeloid leukemia (Rothe et al., 2014), breast cancer (Bortnik et al., 2016) and pancreatic carcinoma (Yang et al., 2018). This evidence concerns the gene ATG4B and cancer.