BNIP3/NIX-mediated mitophagy contributes to the dox-resistance to CSCs in colorectal cancer and the silencing of BNIP3L both prevents mitophagy and increases the sensitivity to doxorubicin therapy (Yan et al., 2017), which suggests the importance of mitophagy in drug resistance for cancer therapy targeting CSCs. The gene discussed is BNIP3; the disease is cancer.