Advances in studies on active components in Chinese materia medica modulating autophagy / 中草药

ABSTRACT

Autophagy, as a high conserved starvation response mechanism with defensive and protective effects in eukaryotic cell, is a lysosome-mediated degradation process for non-essential or damaged cellular constituents. It plays an important homeostatic role in cell survival, differentiation, and development to maintain the homeostasis. Autophagy is involved in neurodegenerative disease, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, and tumor. Thus, modulating autophagy may provide the potential therapeutic strategies. Recently, many active components of Chinese materia medica (CMM) have been found with the modulatting function on the autophagy in tumor cell, nerve cell, myocardial cell, and endothelial cell. This paper mainly reviews the advances in researches on the active components of CMM for modulating autophagy in recent three years.