Autophagy as a Therapeutic Target

Plenty of evidence points to improvement in the cellular maintenance processes of autophagy (primarily macroautophagy and chaperone-mediated autophagy) as the primary mechanism by which the response to mild stress improves health and extends life. Autophagy recycles broken molecules and damaged structures in the cells. More recycling implies better function, a lesser burden of damage and dysfunction at any given time. This underlies the extension of life span resulting from calorie restriction, for example. Researchers are interested in the development of drugs that mimic these stress responses by artificially upregulating autophagy. mTOR inhibitors achieve this goal, as do other calorie restriction mimetic drugs, but the effects in humans are so far modest, producing effects that, on the whole, compare poorly to the outcome of structured exercise programs, or the practice of calorie restriction itself. Autophagy refers to a process in which the intracellular components such as abnormal proteins, damaged organelles, foreign pathogens, and other cellular components are degraded via lysosome. This catabolic process is evolutionarily conserved from yeast to mammalian cells. In mammalian cells, autophagy has been traditionally classified into the following three main types, macroautophagy, microautophagy, and chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA). Among them, macroautophagy is featured by the formation of a unique double-membrane organelle, the autophagosome. In contrast, b...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs