A plant-based alkaloid with anti-cancer effects named Copstin was found to mediate autophagy and mitophagy in Hep3B cells by inhibiting the PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway, which consequently led to ROS accumulation (Kim et al., 2021), and a synthetic chemical preservative, propyl gallate (PG), has been shown to induce ROS production and cell death in HCC cells (Wei et al., 2019). The gene discussed is AKT1; the disease is hepatocellular carcinoma.