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Topic: Autophagy and Cancer:
Current Biology and Drug
Development
Autophagy is a fundamental process for cells to degrade
unwanted proteins/damaged organelles and also to recycle
cellular components. Since its discovery in the 1960s, a
vast amount of effort has been made in understanding the
physiological roles of this process. For example, it is now
Chun Hei Antonio Cheung known that mitosis, apoptosis, and autophagy are inter-
connected and inter-regulated in cells. It is also known
Department of Pharmacology, College that upregulation of autophagy is a double-edged sword
of Medicine, National Cheng Kung that promotes both cell survival and cell death, depending
University, Tainan, Taiwan.
on the circumstances. However, the pathological role
of autophagy in normal-to-cancer cell transformation,
tumor development, and tumor drug resistance was
not clear until the arrival of various breakthrough
discoveries in the past 15 years. Noticeably, it has been
demonstrated that dysregulation of autophagy (and
probably downregulation) induces genomic instability
in non-cancerous cells and subsequently promotes
tumorigenesis. In contrast, upregulation of autophagy
has been shown to enhance the survival ability of cancer
cells in response to various micro-environmental stresses
and different chemotherapeutic agents. Therefore,
autophagy is currently a “hot” cellular pathway target for
the development of cancer therapeutics.
This Special Issue contains reviews focusing on recent
understandings on the regulation of autophagy in non-
cancerous cells and dysregulation of this process in cancer
cells. Reviews on recent advances in the development
of autophagy modulators for cancer treatment are also
included in this Special Issue.
