An additional CASP9 stop-gain mutation was identified in a pediatric glioma patient, suggesting that caspase-9 loss-of-function may contribute to the pathogenesis of some pediatric brain cancers (Muskens et al., 2020).The Q221R mutation of caspase-9 has been associated with increased risk of multiple malignancies (Lan et al., 2007; Hosgood et al., 2008; Zhang et al., 2013b; Ozdogan et al., 2017), however as discussed previously, the functional consequence of this single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) remains unclear. Here, CASP9 is linked to brain cancer.