Abstract
Autophagy is a self-digestion process, wrapping cytoplasmic proteins or organelles to form vesicles for degradation in lysosomes. The process plays an important role in the maintenance of intracellular homostasis. Here we overview articles on autophagy and cancer/tumors in Pubmed and found 327 articles. Autophagy exists in many tumors and is involved in cell malignant transformation and tumor cell growth. In early phases of tumorigenesis, autophagy clears the abnormally folded proteins and dysfunctional organelles such as mitochondria. Autophagy can also inhibit cell stress responses and prevent genetic damage. When a tumor develops, autophagy helps tumor cells survive nutritional deficiencies and hypoxic conditions. Studies of autophagy in the occurrence and progression of tumors should provide new therapeutic strategies for tumors.
Highlights
In 1955, de Duve et al (1955) first described the term “autophagy” to distinguish lysosomal degradation, or cellular “eating” of self, from the breakdown of extracellular material
Autophagy exists in many tumors and is involved in cell malignant transformation and tumor cell growth
Autophagy is a kind of adaptive response to sublethal stress (Hotchkiss et al, 2009) and it allows cells that are in a hungry status or lack of growth factor to survive temporarily
Summary
In 1955, de Duve et al (1955) first described the term “autophagy” to distinguish lysosomal degradation, or cellular “eating” (phagy) of self (auto), from the breakdown of extracellular material (heterophagy). There are three major types of autophagy in eukaryotic cells-macroautophagy, microautophagy, and chaperonemediated autophagy (CMA)-and they are mechanistically different from each other (Massey et al, 2004; Klionsky, 2005) (Figure 1). Both macro- and microautophagy involve dynamic membrane rearrangement to engulf portions of the cytoplasm, and they have the capacity for the sequestration of large structures, such as entire organelles. The autophagy process can be dissected into a series of steps: induction, vesicle nucleation, cargo recognition (for specific types of autophagy) and packaging, vesicle expansion and completion, ATG protein cycling, vesicle fusion with the lysosome/vacuole, vesicle breakdown and nutrient recycling.
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