CASP9 and hepatocellular carcinoma: In addition, AS-IV in astragaloside (AS) can increase the ratio of pro-apoptotic protein (Bax) to anti-apoptotic protein B-cell lymphoma-2 (Bcl-2), upregulate the expression of caspase-3 and caspase-9 in the caspase family, and induce endogenous apoptosis in various types of cancers, including colorectal cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma, etc. (Suying et al., 2016; Lijun et al., 2017; Liwei et al., 2019; SUN et al., 2019; Fang and Lijiang, 2020; Xiang et al., 2020), which is concentration- and time-dependent.