Autophagic pathways as new targets for cancer drug development

Bo Liu, Yan Cheng, Qian Liu, Jin Ku Bao, Jin Ming Yang

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

111 Scopus citations

Abstract

Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved lysosomal self-digestion process involved in degradation of long-lived proteins and damaged organelles. In recent years, increasing evidence indicates that autophagy is associated with a number of pathological processes, including cancer. In this review, we focus on the recent studies of the evolutionarily conserved autophagy-related genes (ATGs) that are implicated in autophagosome formation and the pathways involved. We discuss several key autophagic mediators (eg, Beclin-1, UVRAG, Bcl-2, Class III and I PI3K, mTOR, and p53) that play pivotal roles in autophagic signaling networks in cancer. We discuss the Janus roles of autophagy in cancer and highlighted their relationship to tumor suppression and tumor progression. We also present some examples of targeting ATGs and several protein kinases as anticancer strategy, and discuss some autophagy-modulating agents as antitumor agents. A better understanding of the relationship between autophagy and cancer would ultimately allow us to harness autophagic pathways as new targets for drug discovery in cancer therapeutics.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1154-1164
Number of pages11
JournalActa Pharmacologica Sinica
Volume31
Issue number9
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2010

Keywords

  • Bcl-2
  • Class III and I PI3K
  • autophagy
  • autophagy-related gene (ATG), Beclin-1
  • cancer
  • mTOR
  • p53

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Pharmacology
  • Pharmacology (medical)

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