Advances in autophagy as a target in the treatment of tumours

Abstract

Autophagy is a multi-step lysosomal degradation process, which regulates energy and material metabolism and has been used to maintain homeostasis. Autophagy has been shown to be involved in the regulation of health and disease. But at present, there is no consensus on the relationship between autophagy and tumour, and we consider that it plays a dual role in the occurrence and development of tumour. That is to say, under certain conditions, it can inhibit the occurrence of tumour, but it can also promote the process of tumour. Therefore, autophagy could be used as a target for tumour treatment. The regulation of autophagy plays a synergistic role in the radiotherapy, chemotherapy, phototherapy and immunotherapy of tumour, and nano drug delivery system provides a promising strategy for improving the efficacy of autophagy regulation. This review summarised the progress in the regulatory pathways and factors of autophagy as well as nanoformulations as carriers for the delivery of autophagy modulators.

Keywords:

• Autophagy
• autophagy regulation
• cancer
• phototherapy immunotherapy
• nanoparticle

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by National Science and Technology Major Special Project-Major New Drug Creation [2019ZX09301-112] and Shandong Provincial Major Science &Technology Innovation Project, P.R.China [2018CXGC1411] and Shandong Provincial Program of Taishan Industrial Experts [No. TSCY 20190331].