Toward the understanding of autophagy regulation and its interplay with cell death pathways

Abstract

The growing importance of autophagy is clearly shown by the exponentially increasing number of publications appearing on a daily basis in PubMed. Although initially autophagy was classified as a form of cell death, it is now generally accepted that this is not the case and that it mainly promotes cell health and survival and, only under peculiar conditions, can it result in cellular death. In the first issue of 2009, Cell Death and Differentiation has already published nine reviews on the topic of autophagy in aging, disease and death.1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 These are now followed by another six papers covering more specific aspects of the complex regulation of this process and its crosstalk with apoptosis and other essential cellular functions, such as energy production, vesicular traffic and cellular immunity.10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15