SLC7A11 and cancer: Ferroptosis was formally named in 2012 as a novel form of cell death, which was induced in certain types of cancers by the anti-cancer drug erastin, which targets the xCT system to transport cystine into cells and has distinct features from other types of cell death, such as apoptosis or classical necrosis (Seiler et al., 2008; Dixon et al., 2012; Stockwell and Jiang, 2020).