To determine if autophagy-defects in HNSCC are existent, RNA was isolated from a panel of 17 HNSCC tumor biopsies of the ARCON trial [22] and screened for mutations and expression in MAP1LC3B/LC3B, ATG3, ATG5, ATG2B, BECN1, SQSTM1/p62 (sequestosome 1), ATG12 and ATG9B (mutations identified in other cancer types or high frequency of nucleotide repeats). Here, ATG12 is linked to head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.