Autophagy and cancer therapy

Abstract

Macroautophagy (hereafter simply called "autophagy") is commonly induced by cancer treatments and has been widely reported to affect the treatment response. However, autophagy may be a double-edged sword with conflicting and competing tumor cell-intrinsic and -extrinsic effects that can inhibit and promote tumor initiation, promotion, progression, and metastasis. These complexities make it critical to understand how autophagy affects tumor cell response to treatment in order to better determine how or even whether we should try to manipulate during cancer therapy and thus improve clinical outcomes.