Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved process whereby cytoplasm and cellular
organelles are degraded in lysosomes for amino acid and energy recycling. Autophagy is a
survival pathway activated in response to nutrient deprivation and other stressful stimuli,
such as metabolic stress and exposure to anticancer drugs. However, autophagy may also
result in cell death, if it proceeds to completion. Defective autophagy is implicated in
tumorigenesis, as the essential autophagy regulator beclin 1 is monoallelically deleted in …

Autophagy is an intracellular self-degradative mechanism which responds to cellular
conditions like stress or starvation and plays a key role in regulating cell metabolism, energy
homeostasis, starvation adaptation, development and cell death. Numerous studies have
stipulated the participation of autophagy in cancer, but the role of autophagy either as tumor
suppressor or tumor promoter is not clearly understood. However, mechanisms by which
autophagy promotes cancer involves a diverse range of modifications of autophagy …