Document Type
Journal Article
Publication Title
Molecules
ISSN
1420-3049
Volume
24
Issue
18
PubMed ID
31527516
Publisher
MDPI
School
Centre of Excellence for Alzheimer’s Disease Research and Care / School of Medical and Health Sciences
RAS ID
29825
Funders
National Health and Medical Research Council
Grant Number
NHMRC Number : 1107109
Abstract
Amyloids are fibrous proteins aggregated into toxic forms that are implicated in several chronic disorders. More than 30 diseases show deposition of fibrous amyloid proteins associated with cell loss and degeneration in the affected tissues. Evidence demonstrates that amyloid diseases result from protein aggregation or impaired amyloid clearance, but the connection between amyloid accumulation and tissue degeneration is not clear. Common examples of amyloid diseases are Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD) and tauopathies, which are the most common forms of neurodegenerative diseases, as well as polyglutamine disorders and certain peripheral metabolic diseases. In these diseases, increased accumulation of toxic amyloid proteins is suspected to be one of the main causative factors in the disease pathogenesis. It is therefore important to more clearly understand how these toxic amyloid proteins accumulate as this will aide in the development of more effective preventive and therapeutic strategies. Protein homeostasis, or proteostasis, is maintained by multiple cellular pathways-including protein synthesis, quality control, and clearance-which are collectively responsible for preventing protein misfolding or aggregation. Modulating protein degradation is a very complex but attractive treatment strategy used to remove amyloid and improve cell survival. This review will focus on autophagy, an important clearance pathway of amyloid proteins, and strategies for using it as a potential therapeutic target for amyloid diseases. The physiological role of autophagy in cells, pathways for its modulation, its connection with apoptosis, cell models and caveats in developing autophagy as a treatment and as a biomarker is discussed.
DOI
10.3390/molecules24183372
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Comments
Mputhia, Z., Hone, E., Tripathi, T., Sargeant, T., Martins, R., & Bharadwaj, P. (2019). Autophagy modulation as a treatment of amyloid diseases. Molecules, 24(18), Article 3372. Available here