Muscone notably elevated the expression of Tribbles pseudokinase 3 (TRIB3) in hepatocellular carcinoma HepG2 cells with an IC50 of 0.663 μM; Muscone activated the ERS-mediated PERK pathway and subsequently induced eIF2α phosphorylation and complex formation with ATF4, induced DDIT3 expression, upregulated caspase-3 and Bax expression and lowered Bcl-2 expression to induce apoptosis; additionally, muscone activated Sestrin 2, an autophagy-related gene, and AMPK to inhibit intracellular mTOR expression, thereby inducing cellular autophagy (Qi et al., 2020). Here, ATF4 is linked to hepatocellular carcinoma.