Autophagy regulation in cancer development and therapy

Abstract

Autophagy is a cellular process to degrade long-lived or malfunctioning proteins and obsolete or damaged organelles. It maintains cellular homeostasis and helps cells survive stressful conditions. Tumor suppressors mostly positively regulate autophagy, whereas oncogene products usually inhibit autophagy. Alterations in key autophagy genes have also been shown to affect cancer development. However, the role of autophagy in cancer depends on the status of the cells and can either suppress or promote tumor growth. In the present review, we report on the current state of knowledge about the reciprocal regulation of autophagy and the potential role of autophagy played in cancer development and therapy.

Figure 1

Schematic representation of the regulation of autophagy. Tumor suppressors (blue) except for cytoplasmic p53 are among the factors positively regulating autophagy, whereas oncogene products (red) inhibit autophagy. Some autophagy genes (green), such as Bif-1, UVRAG, and Beclin 1, are mutated in cancers.