Data mining of the HNSCC cohort of the cancer genome atlas (TCGA) revealed that high mRNA expression of ATG5 or Beclin-1 (BECN1) is associated with decreased overall survival (New et al. 2017; Digomann et al. 2019), indicating a putative association between increased activity of autophagy and decreased overall survival. Here, BECN1 is linked to head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.