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Cheung et al. J Cancer Metastasis Treat 2019;5:60 Journal of Cancer
DOI: 10.20517/2394-4722.2018.74 Metastasis and Treatment

Editorial Open Access

Introduction to this special issue - “Autophagy and
Cancer: current biology and drug development”

Chun Hei Antonio Cheung 1,2

1 Department of Pharmacology, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 70101, Taiwan.
2 Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 70101, Taiwan.
Correspondence to: Prof. Chun Hei Antonio Cheung, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 70101, Taiwan.
E-mail: acheung@mail.ncku.edu.tw

How to cite this article: Cheung CHA. Introduction to this special issue - “Autophagy and Cancer: current biology and drug
development”. J Cancer Metastasis Treat 2019;5:60. http://dx.doi.org/10.20517/2394-4722.2018.74

Received: 14 Nov 2018 First Decision: 28 Nov 2018 Revised: 5 Dec 2018 Accepted: 10 Dec 2018 Published: 9 Aug 2019

Science Editor: Chun Hei Antonio Cheung Copy Editor: Jia-Jia Meng Production Editor: Tian Zhang

It is my pleasure, as one of the editorial board members, to introduce the readers of JCMT to this special
issue entitled “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 on 1960’s, a vast amount of effort has been made in
understanding the physiological role/s of this process. For example, it is now known that mitosis, apoptosis,
[1]
and autophagy are inter-connected and inter-regulated in cells . It is also known that upregulation of
autophagy is a double-edged sword that promotes both cell survival and cell death, depending on the
circumstances. However, the pathological role/s 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
[2]
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
[3]
agents . Therefore, autophagy is currently a “hot” cellular pathway target for the development of cancer
[4-7]
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.

© The Author(s) 2019. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use,
sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, for any purpose, even commercially, as long
as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license,
and indicate if changes were made.

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