University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, CO, USA.
Cancer Biol Ther. 2011 Jan 15;11(2):127-37. doi: 10.4161/cbt.11.2.14627.
Although autophagy has been shown to have a clear role as a tumor suppressor mechanism, its role in cancer treatment is still controversial. Because autophagy is a survival pathway activated during nutrient deprivation and other stresses, it is reasonable to think that autophagy can function as a tumor cell survival mechanism activated after cancer treatment. Such a mechanism could be widely important because most cancer treatments induce autophagy in tumor cells. Indeed, many papers have presented data suggesting that tumor cell autophagy induced by anti-cancer treatment inhibits tumor cell killing. However, it has also been proposed that autophagy is a cell death mechanism that could function as a backup when apoptosis is disabled. The fact that there are active clinical trials in patients both using autophagy inhibitors or inducers together with other cancer treatments underscores the importance of understanding and distinguishing between these opposing ideas. Here we discuss some of the recent work studying the role of autophagy with different cancer therapies.
尽管自噬已被证明是一种明确的肿瘤抑制机制，但它在癌症治疗中的作用仍存在争议。因为自噬是在营养缺乏和其他应激时激活的生存途径，所以可以合理地认为，自噬可以作为癌症治疗后激活的肿瘤细胞生存机制发挥作用。这种机制可能非常重要，因为大多数癌症治疗都会诱导肿瘤细胞中的自噬。事实上，许多论文都提出了数据表明，抗癌治疗诱导的肿瘤细胞自噬会抑制肿瘤细胞杀伤。然而，也有人提出自噬是一种细胞死亡机制，当细胞凋亡失活时，它可以作为一种备用机制发挥作用。目前正在患者中进行的使用自噬抑制剂或诱导剂与其他癌症治疗联合应用的临床试验突显了理解和区分这些相反观点的重要性。在这里，我们讨论了一些最近研究不同癌症疗法中自噬作用的工作。
