Berberine (Ortiz et al., 2014) is a promising drug for cancer therapy that upregulates caspase-1 mRNA and protein expression in an HCC cell line (HepG2 cells) in a concentration-dependent manner, inhibiting cell survival via caspase-1-mediated pyroptosis (Chu et al., 2016). Here, CASP1 is linked to hepatocellular carcinoma.