About this Research Topic

Background

Cancer is one of the deadliest and most intractable diseases, with a global mortality rate that is much higher than other diseases. The incidence of human cancers continues to rise and is one of the major challenges facing healthcare workers. Over the past two decades, genomics and high-throughput screening have made remarkable progress in diagnosing and discovering new drugs for human malignancies. In the era of precision medicine, compared with traditional chemotherapy drugs, targeted drugs can specifically target cancer cells rather than normal cells, so they have the advantages of high efficacy and low toxicity. Such drugs often interfere with the programmed death of cancer cells, thereby affecting the survival and development of tumor cells. Among them, autophagy, as a subroutine of programmed cell death (PCD), plays an important role in cancer. Therefore, the discovery of malignant tumor-related targets of autophagy and of the related mechanism of action of targeted small-molecule drugs is of the utmost importance. Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved intracellular catabolic process in which cytoplasmic macromolecules, aggregated proteins, damaged organelles, or pathogens are transported to lysosomes and digested by lysosomal hydrolases, producing nucleotides, amino acids, fatty acids, sugars, and adenosine triphosphate, which are eventually recycled to the cytoplasm. Autophagy plays a dynamic tumor suppressing or promoting role in different stages of tumor development and in different environments. In the early stage of tumorigenesis, autophagy, as a survival pathway and quality control mechanism, prevents tumorigenesis and inhibits tumor development. Once tumors are advanced and subject to environmental stress, autophagy, as a dynamic degradation and recycling system, contributes to the survival and growth of established tumors and promotes tumor aggressiveness by promoting metastasis. It will provide a clue on the regulation of autophagy that may serve as an effective intervention strategy for cancer therapy.

On the one hand, we accept manuscripts dealing with the discovery of new autophagy-related technologies and methods for tumor diagnosis and treatment. On the other hand, we also invite researchers to share their recent findings on the discovery and validation of autophagy-related malignant tumor targets, and of associated therapeutic entities including traditional Chinese medicines and small-molecule drugs.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:

• Discovery and validation of cancer targets in autophagy.
• New technologies for cancer diagnosis and therapy related to autophagy.
• Molecular mechanisms of anti-tumor agents targeting autophagy (incl. traditional Chinese Medicine and small-molecules)

Keywords: Autophagy, drug target, drug discovery, cancer diagnosis, cancer therapy, small-molecule modulator

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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