BAX and cystic fibrosis: Downstream effectors of IRE1 such as Bax, Bcl-2, PUMA, JNK, and caspase-3 have been reported to be involved in CF apoptosis (Tian et al., 2002; Mayorga et al., 2004; Lai et al., 2009; Ghavami et al., 2012a; Ghavami et al., 2012b; Feng et al., 2018; Parra-Flores et al., 2021).