BIRC5 and central nervous system cancer: RG7112-induced changes in BAX, PUMA (BBC3), and survivin (BIRC5) expression were canceled or attenuated at both the mRNA and protein levels upon the knockdown of p53 (Figure 6A,B), which suggested that BAX, PUMA, and survivin were under the transcriptional control of p53 in glioma stem cells and also that the inhibition of MDM2 modulated the expression of these regulators of apoptosis in a p53-dependent manner.