We observed that the mRNA expression of 13 ATGs (ATG3, ATG4A, ATG4C, ATG5, ATG7, ATG9B, ATG10, ATG12, ATG16L1, ATG2A, ATG2B, ATG9A and ATG16L2) were closely associated with the OS of glioma patients (Fig. 1a and Additional file 2: Figure S2). Here, ATG7 is linked to central nervous system cancer.