Eating to exit: autophagy-enabled senescence revealed.

Autophagy and senescence are two distinct cellular responses to stress that are also tumor suppression mechanisms. In this issue of Genes & Development, Young and colleagues (pp. 798-803) discovered that autophagy is induced during and facilitates the process of senescence. Knowing now that these two pathways are functionally intertwined sets the stage for establishing how they function cooperatively in the cancer setting.