Autophagy and Alzheimer’s Disease

• Published in: Cellular and molecular neurobiology Vol. 37; no. 3; pp. 377 - 388
• Main Authors: Li, Qian, Liu, Yi, Sun, Miao
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.04.2017; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Alzheimer Disease - pathology; Alzheimer Disease - therapy; Alzheimer's disease; Animals; Autophagy; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Biomedicine; Cell Biology; Drug Delivery Systems; Genetic Therapy; Homeostasis; Humans; Mammalian cells; Models, Biological; Neurobiology; Neurodegenerative diseases; Neuromodulation; Neurosciences; Phagocytosis; Rapamycin; Review Paper; Signal Transduction; Tau protein; TOR protein; β-Amyloid; β-Amyloid; Tau; Alzheimer’s disease; Autophagy
• ISSN: 0272-4340; 1573-6830; 1573-6830
• DOI: 10.1007/s10571-016-0386-8

Autophagy is an essential degradation pathway in clearing abnormal protein aggregates in mammalian cells and is responsible for protein homeostasis and neuronal health. Several studies have shown that autophagy deficits occurred in early stage of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Autophagy plays an important role in generation and metabolism of β-amyloid (Aβ), assembling of tau and thus its malfunction may lead to the progress of AD. By considering the above evidences, autophagy may be a new target in developing drugs for AD. So far, a number of mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR)-dependent and independent autophagy modulators have been identified to have positive effects in AD treatment. In this review, we summarized the latest progress supporting the role for autophagy deficits in AD and the potential therapeutic effects of autophagy modulators in AD.