BAX and nasopharyngeal carcinoma: In our study, we found that the inhibition of BAX did not impair mtDNA-mediated type-I IFN responses in irradiated NPC cells, which was attributed to that only a small fraction of cells developed apoptosis when treated with 6 Gy48, and thus BAX that facilitates mtDNA release in the apoptotic cells28 might not be fully activated and oligomerized.