The hypoxia-induced onset of autophagy has been described mechanistically for a number of cancers, including renal cancer (51), glioblastoma (52), bladder cancer (53), lung cancer (54) and acute myeloid leukemia.(55) Mechanistic insights in renal cancer have implicated HIF-2α to transcriptionally upregulate inositol triphosphate receptor 1 (ITPR1), a regulator of autophagy through calcium signaling (5). Here, ITPR1 is linked to renal carcinoma.