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Stimulating the cell's appetite for itself

Nature Chemical Biology volume 3, pages 304–306 (2007)Cite this article

New inducers of autophagy—the process by which cells use lysosomes to degrade portions of their cytoplasm—are lead compounds for new drugs targeting neurodegenerative protein aggregation diseases.

Induction of a process that augments the cell's capacity to degrade intracellular protein aggregates is a goal in therapy of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and Huntington's disease. These diseases are characterized by accumulation of intracellular protein aggregates in nerve cells, which ultimately cause cell death and ensuing loss of brain functions1,2. On p. 331 of this issue, Sarkar et al.3 describe a set of new neuroprotective compounds that stimulate the cell's digestion of protein aggregates.

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Figure 1: SMERs as novel inducers of autophagy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. and the Department of Biochemistry, Anne Simonsen and Harald Stenmark are in the Centre for Cancer Biomedicine, University of Oslo, the Norwegian Radium Hospital, Montebello, N-0310 Oslo, Norway. stenmark@ulrik.uio.no,

    Anne Simonsen & Harald Stenmark

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  1. Anne Simonsen
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  2. Harald Stenmark
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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Simonsen, A., Stenmark, H. Stimulating the cell's appetite for itself. Nat Chem Biol 3, 304–306 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio0607-304

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