Tat-BECN1 and derivatives not only induce autosis specifically in HIV-1-infected cells (Zhang et al., 2018; Zhang et al., 2019) but also kill cancer cells in culture in vitro and inhibit tumor xenograft growth with negligible systemic toxicity in vivo (Wang et al., 2015; Ding et al., 2018; Zhou et al., 2019). The gene discussed is TAT; the disease is cancer.