Pro-survival autophagy and cancer cell resistance to therapy

Resistance to therapy is one of the prime causes for treatment failure in cancer and recurrent disease. In recent years, autophagy has emerged as an important cell survival mechanism in response to different stress conditions that are associated with cancer treatment and aging. Autophagy is an evolu...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cancer and metastasis reviews 2018-12, Vol.37 (4), p.749-766
Main Authors: Das, Chandan Kanta, Mandal, Mahitosh, Kögel, Donat
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Autophagy
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Biomedicine
Cancer
Cancer Research
Cancer therapies
Care and treatment
Cell death
Cell survival
Evolutionary conservation
Health aspects
Homeostasis
Lysosomes
Medical treatment
Molecular modelling
Non-Thematic Review
Oncology
Phagocytosis
Phagosomes
Stress
Tumors
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Resistance to therapy is one of the prime causes for treatment failure in cancer and recurrent disease. In recent years, autophagy has emerged as an important cell survival mechanism in response to different stress conditions that are associated with cancer treatment and aging. Autophagy is an evolutionary conserved catabolic process through which damaged cellular contents are degraded after uptake into autophagosomes that subsequently fuse with lysosomes for cargo degradation, thereby alleviating stress. In addition, autophagy serves to maintain cellular homeostasis by enriching nutrient pools. Although autophagy can act as a double-edged sword at the interface of cell survival and cell death, increasing evidence suggest that in the context of cancer therapy-induced stress responses, it predominantly functions as a cell survival mechanism. Here, we provide an up-to-date overview on our current knowledge of the role of pro-survival autophagy in cancer therapy at the preclinical and clinical stages and delineate the molecular mechanisms of autophagy regulation in response to therapy-related stress conditions. A better understanding of the interplay of cancer therapy and autophagy may allow to unveil new targets and avenues for an improved treatment of therapy-resistant tumors in the foreseeable future.
ISSN:0167-7659
1573-7233
DOI:10.1007/s10555-018-9727-z