autophagy tagged posts

Existing drugs may offer effective treatment. Prevailing theories posit plaques in the brain cause Alzheimer’s disease. New UC Riverside research points to cells’ slowing ability to clean themselves as the likely cause of unhealthy brain buildup.

Along with signs of dementia, doctors make a definitive Alzheimer’s diagnosis if they find a combination of two things in the brain: amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. The plaques are a buildup of amyloid peptides, and the tangles are mostly made of a protein called tau.

“Roughly 20% of people have the plaques, but no signs of dementia,” said UCR Chemistry Professor Ryan Julian. “This makes it seem as though the plaques themselves are not the cause.”

For this reason, Julian and his colleagues investigated understudied aspec...

Autophagy is an important biological recycling mechanism that is used to maintain homeostasis (balance or equilibrium) within all types of animal tissue. Many studies have attempted to understand the relationship between the reduction of autophagy and progression of aging in animals; however, none have provided a clear explanation, until now.

In 2009, a research team led by Tamotsu Yoshimori at Osaka University identified Rubicon as a protein factor that suppresses autophagy by controlling a specific step in this pathway...

Cellular recycling process, thought to fuel cancer’s growth, can actually prevent it. Scientists studying the relationship of telomeres to cancer made a surprising discovery: a cellular recycling process called autophagy – generally thought of as a survival mechanism – actually promotes the death of cells, thereby preventing cancer initiation.

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The UTSW research team that reported on autophagy in Nature includes, from left: (front) Drs. Ming Chang Hu, Beth Levine, and Orson Moe, and (back) Salwa Sebti and Álvaro Fernández. Credit: Image courtesy of UT Southwestern Medical Center

Building on two decades of research, investigators at UT Southwestern have determined that “cellular housekeeping” can extend the lifespan and healthspan of mammals. A study jointly led by Drs. Salwa Sebti and Álvaro Fernández, postdoctoral researchers in the Center for Autophagy Research, found that mice with persistently increased levels of autophagy – the process a cell uses to dispose of unwanted or toxic substances that can harm cellular health – live longer and are healthier...