Abstract
Autophagy is a delicate intracellular degradation process that occurs due to diverse stressful conditions, including the accumulation of damaged proteins and organelles as well as nutrient deprivation. The mechanism of autophagy is initiated by the creation of autophagosomes, which capture and encapsulate abnormal components. Afterward, autophagosomes assemble with lysosomes to recycle or remove degradative cargo. The regulation of autophagy has bipolar roles in cancer suppression and promotion in diverse cancers. Furthermore, autophagy modulates the features of tumorigenesis, cancer metastasis, cancer stem cells, and drug resistance against anticancer agents. Some autophagy regulators are used to modulate autophagy for anticancer therapy but the dual roles of autophagy limit their application in anticancer therapy, and present as the main reason for therapy failure. In this review, we summarize the mechanisms of autophagy, tumorigenesis, metastasis, cancer stem cells, and resistance against anticancer agents. Finally, we discuss whether targeting autophagy is a promising and effective therapeutic strategy in anticancer therapy.
Highlights
Autophagy is a highly conserved cellular process that maintains cellular homeostasis by the degradation and recycling of damaged or long-lived proteins, misfolded proteins, and damaged and abnormal organelles [1,2,3]
Autophagy modulates the delicate intracellular processes responding to stressful conditions, such as nutrient deprivation, damaged organelles, and anticancer therapy
Autophagy plays a bipolar role in cell survival and death in cancer initiation and development
Summary
Autophagy is a highly conserved cellular process that maintains cellular homeostasis by the degradation and recycling of damaged or long-lived proteins, misfolded proteins, and damaged and abnormal organelles [1,2,3]. Autophagy is a delicate degradation process induced by double membrane vesicles called autophagosomes, which form the autolysosomes—after fusion with lysosomes—to recycle cellular components [2,4]. Autophagy has a tumor-suppressive role in cancer initiation and the progression of malignant tumors. We summarize several mechanisms of autophagy in cancer biology well as as itsits roles as tumorigenesis, tumorigenesis, metastasis, metastasis,and anddrug drugresisreas well rolesinintumor tumorprocesses, processes, such such as sistance. Is induced under diverse cellular stress conditions, as vation, cellular damage, and the production of dysfunctional proteins [8]. Microautophagy is a direct autophagic process involving degradation and recycling [15]. CMA is a selective autophagy, in which cargo complexed with chaperone proteins (such (such as as HSC70).
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