The strongest functional genetic association between caspase-9 and cancer is a stop-gain mutation at R65, which results in a catalytically inactive short isoform of caspase-9, and may cause increased susceptibility to development of anaplastic astrocytomas consistent with Li-Fraumeni-like syndrome (Ronellenfitsch et al., 2018). Here, CASP9 is linked to anaplastic astrocytoma.