BNIP3 and cancer: Hu et al. [36] found that BNIP3 could serve as a prognostic biomarker for breast cancer patients, and patients with breast cancer with high BNIP3 expression had poorer overall survival, disease-free survival (DFS, the measure of time after treatment during which no sign of cancer is found [37]), and disease-specific survival (DSS, the percentage of people who die from a specific disease in a defined period of time, i.e., patients who die from causes other than the disease being studied are not counted [38]).