Autophagy and its implication in human oral diseases

Abstract

Macroautophagy/autophagy is a conserved lysosomal degradation process essential for cell physiology and human health. By regulating apoptosis, inflammation, pathogen clearance, immune response and other cellular processes, autophagy acts as a modulator of pathogenesis and is a potential therapeutic target in diverse diseases. With regard to oral disease, autophagy can be problematic either when it is activated or impaired, because this process is involved in diverse functions, depending on the specific disease and its level of progression. In particular, activated autophagy functions as a cytoprotective mechanism under environmental stress conditions, which regulates tumor growth and mediates resistance to anticancer treatment in established tumors. During infections and inflammation, activated autophagy selectively delivers microbial antigens to the immune systems, and is therefore connected to the elimination of intracellular pathogens. Impaired autophagy contributes to oxidative stress, genomic instability, chronic tissue damage, inflammation and tumorigenesis, and is involved in aberrant bacterial clearance and immune priming. Hence, substantial progress in the study of autophagy provides new insights into the pathogenesis of oral diseases. This review outlines the mechanisms of autophagy, and highlights the emerging roles of this process in oral cancer, periapical lesions, periodontal diseases, and oral candidiasis.

The physiological roles of autophagy in the mammalian life cycle

“…The functions of autophagy are widespread and alteration of normal autophagy leads to a plethora of diseases, which have been reviewed elsewhere (Mizushima & Komatsu, 2011;Kim & Lee, 2014). Dysfunction of autophagy in different tissues results in distinct a range of diseases (Saha et al, 2018;Xie & Zhou, 2018), including neurodegeneration (Xie & Zhou, 2018), cardiac diseases (Lavandero et al, 2015), immune diseases (Pengo et al, 2013;Netea-Maier et al, 2016;Hua et al, 2018), obesity (Zhang, Sowers & Ren, 2018), tumorigenesis (Kimmelman & White, 2017),renal diseases (De Rechter et al, 2016) and oral diseases (Tan, Zhang & Zhou, 2017), among others.…”

Autophagy impacts on oxaliplatin-induced hepatocarcinoma apoptosis via the IL-17/IL-17R-JAK2/STAT3 signaling pathway

“…Increasingly, studies have focused on the effect of autophagy on tumor progression (25,26). Autophagy is a reversible process that regulates tumor survival or death; thus, it is closely associated with tumor progression (27).…”

Overcoming resistance to mitochondrial apoptosis by BZML‐induced mitotic catastrophe is enhanced by inhibition of autophagy in A549/Taxol cells

“…Additionally, autophagy has been proposed as a tumour suppressor, plays a key pro‐survival role in cells by eliminating damaged organelles and proteins, and contributes apoptosis resistance in cancer cells . Importantly, the different functional forms of autophagy depend on the genetic background of cells, the microenvironment and the type of drug . Recently, other types of PCD, including necroptosis, MC and senescence, have been reported .…”

“…[23][24][25][26] Importantly, the different functional forms of autophagy depend on the genetic background of cells, the microenvironment and the type of drug. 27,28 Recently, other types of PCD, including necroptosis, MC and senescence, have been reported. 10,[29][30][31] MC, a p53-independent apoptosis-like cell death mode to against apoptosis resistance, has received more attention.…”