New insight in treating autoimmune diseases by targeting autophagy

Abstract

Autophagy is a highly conserved biological process in eukaryotes, which degrades cellular misfolded proteins, damaged organelles and invasive pathogens in the lysosome-dependent manner. Autoimmune diseases caused by genetic elements, environments and aberrant immune responses severely impact patients’ living quality and even threaten life. Recently, numerous studies have reported autophagy can regulate immune responses, and play an important role in autoimmune diseases. In this review, we summarised the features of autophagy and autophagy-related genes, enumerated some autophagy-related genes involved in autoimmune diseases, and further overviewed how to treat autoimmune diseases through targeting autophagy. Finally, we outlooked the prospect of relieving and curing autoimmune diseases by targeting autophagy pathway.

Keywords:

• Autoimmune diseases
• autophagy
• ATGs
• treatments strategies

Authors’ contributions

J. Lyu, H.Z. and C.W. wrote the manuscript and prepared figures. Tables were created by J. Lyu. M.P. edited and revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (82202008), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20221029).