CASP9 and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis: To gain mechanistic insights into the reduction in hepatocyte apoptosis, we showed that MøFoxO1-KO mice, as opposed to WT littermates, had significantly reduced expression of proapoptotic genes coding for Bax, Bad, caspase 3, caspase 8, and caspase 9 proteins in the liver, consistent with the improvement of NASH in MøFoxO1-KO mice on a NASH diet (Figure 6I).