Abstract
Autophagy is a self-degradative process important for balancing cellular homeostasis at critical times in development and/or in response to nutrient stress. This is particularly relevant in tumor model in which autophagy has been demonstrated to have an important impact on tumor behavior. In one hand, autophagy limits tumor transformation of precancerous cells in early stage, and in the other hand, it favors the survival, proliferation, metastasis, and resistance to antitumor therapies in more advanced tumors. This catabolic machinery can be induced by an important variety of extra- and intracellular stimuli. For instance, viral infection has often been associated to autophagic modulation, and the role of autophagy in virus replication differs according to the virus studied. In the context of tumor development, virus-modulated autophagy can have an important impact on tumor cells’ fate. Extensive analyses have shed light on the molecular and/or functional complex mechanisms by which virus-modulated autophagy influences precancerous or tumor cell development. This review includes an overview of discoveries describing the repercussions of an autophagy perturbation during viral infections on tumor behavior.
Highlights
Reviewed by: Manuela Antonioli, Istituto Nazionale per le Malattie Infettive Lazzaro Spallanzani (IRCCS), Italy Susana Romero-Garcia, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, Mexico
Even if autophagy has often been considered as a non-selective mechanism, many studies highlighted an important role for autophagy in selective materials and/or organelles recycling, including mitophagy, which selectively targets damaged mitochondria to autophagosome, or xenophagy, which permits the selective degradation of pathogens and/or pathogens’ elements through autophagy [2]
Autophagy seems acting as a double-edged sword: in one hand, autophagy limits the tumorigenesis of precancerous cells, and in another hand, it serves as an important survival mechanism for established tumors
Summary
Lucas Leonardi 1,2, Sophie Siberil 1,2, Marco Alifano 1,3, Isabelle Cremer 1,2 and Pierre-Emmanuel Joubert 1,2*. Autophagy is a self-degradative process important for balancing cellular homeostasis at critical times in development and/or in response to nutrient stress. This is relevant in tumor model in which autophagy has been demonstrated to have an important impact on tumor behavior. Autophagy limits tumor transformation of precancerous cells in early stage, and in the other hand, it favors the survival, proliferation, metastasis, and resistance to antitumor therapies in more advanced tumors. This catabolic machinery can be induced by an important variety of extra- and intracellular stimuli. Specialty section: This article was submitted to Cancer Metabolism, a section of the journal
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