Peng et al.'s team found that BECN1 (encoding BECN1/Beclin 1), which induces autophagy, is cleaved and inactivated by caspase-3 in the absence of an abhydrolase domain containing 5 (ABHD5); ABHD5 increases the genomic instability and promotes the occurrence of cancer [9]. Here, BECN1 is linked to cancer.