Although it has been shown that HIV-Tat and METH have synergistic effects on inducing autophagy in SH-SY5Y human neuroblastoma cells, which act as dopaminergic neuronal cells (Qi et al., 2011; Zeng et al., 2018), the mechanism that underlies the induction of autophagy via HIV-Tat and METH has not been elucidated. This evidence concerns the gene TAT and neuroblastoma.