BECN1 and cancer: Numerous alterations in of the expression of autophagic genes have been reported in several types of cancer such as pancreatic, lung, bladder and breast cancer; in fact, the monoallelic deletion of genes such as ATG5, ATG6, ATG7 and the total loss of ATG4 have been linked to the risk of induction of malignancies (Mariño et al., 2007; Takamura et al., 2011).