Autophagy is an intracellular catabolic degradative process in which damaged cellular organelles, unwanted proteins and different cytoplasmic components get recycled to maintain cellular homeostasis or metabolic balance. During autophagy, a double membrane vesicle is formed to engulf these cytosolic materials and fuse to lysosomes wherein the entire cargo degrades to be used again. Because of this unique recycling ability of cells, autophagy is a universal stress response mechanism. Dysregulation of autophagy leads to several diseases, including cancer, neurodegeneration and microbial infection. Thus, autophagy machineries have become targets for therapeutics. This chapter provides an overview of the paradoxical role of autophagy in tumorigenesis in the perspective of metabolism.
Keywords: Autophagy; Cancer; Histone modifications; Metabolism.
© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.