In human cancers, the anti-apoptotic proteins (e.g. Bcl-2, Bcl-XL, and Mcl1) are often upregulated in cancer cells, enabling them to evade apoptotic cell death and losing the capacity to undergo apoptosis in response to chemotherapeutic drugs (Wilson et al., 2006; Pan et al., 2016). The gene discussed is BCL2L1; the disease is cancer.