ATG5 and cancer: However, since ATG5 has several highly cancer-relevant non-autophagic functions (Yousefi et al., 2006; Maskey et al., 2013; Guo et al., 2017; Li et al., 2021), it will be essential to evaluate whether the increase in migration, invasion and metastasis that was observed upon ATG5 knockdown also occurs upon knockdown of other central ATGs.