BAX and hepatocellular carcinoma: Huang WH et al. found that, compared with normal tissues, mRNA expression and protein expression of Notch1 in HCC tissues increased significantly, and knockout of Notch1 significantly inhibited the expression of apoptosis suppressor gene Bcl-2, and enhanced the expression of pro-apoptotic gene Bax, which indicates that astragalus polysaccharides may mediate apoptosis of human HCC cells through regulating Bcl-2 family proteins by inhibiting Notch1 (Huang et al., 2016).