Previous studies have shown that DHA induces apoptosis, autophagy and ferroptosis of cancer cells via caspase activation, cytochrome c release, Mcl-1 down-regulation, MEK/ERK inactivation, JNK/NF-κB pathway activation, AKT-mTOR pathway suppression, and autophagy-dependent degradation of ferritin (Gao et al., 2011; Liu et al., 2018; Wu L. et al., 2019; Zou et al., 2019). Here, MCL1 is linked to cancer.