Consistently, lycorine treatment decreased the relative levels of caspse-3, caspase-9 and PARP in HSFs, which may reflect an increase in the degradation of Caspse9, Caspase3 and PARP, similar to that in oral squamous cell carcinoma HSC-3 cells (Li et al., 2021). Here, CASP9 is linked to oral cavity squamous cell carcinoma.