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Review
. 2018 Apr 13;293(15):5425-5430.
doi: 10.1074/jbc.R117.810739. Epub 2017 Nov 30.

Autophagy and disease

Andrew Thorburn  1
Affiliations
Review

Autophagy and disease

Andrew Thorburn. J Biol Chem. .

Abstract

As outlined in the accompanying Minireviews, autophagy is a complicated and highly regulated process that delivers cellular material to lysosomes for degrading, recycling, and generating molecules that fuel cellular metabolism. Autophagy is important for normal cellular and organismal physiology, and both increased and decreased autophagy has been associated with disease. Importantly, these connections are already being exploited to treat patients with dozens of clinical trials that aim to manipulate autophagy to treat (or prevent) disease. This Minireview discusses some of the important issues and problems to be solved if these efforts are to be successful.

Keywords: autophagy; cancer; disease; infectious disease; metabolic disease; neurodegeneration.

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Conflict of interest statement

The author declares that he has no conflicts of interest with the contents of this article

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