Autophagy, aging, and age-related neurodegeneration

Autophagy is a conserved mechanism that degrades damaged or superfluous cellular contents and enables nutrient recycling under starvation conditions. Many neurodegeneration-associated proteins are autophagy substrates, and autophagy upregulation ameliorates disease in many animal models of neurodegeneration by enhancing the clearance of toxic proteins, proinflammatory molecules, and dysfunctional organelles. Autophagy inhibition also induces neuronal and glial senescence, a phenomenon that occurs with increasing age in non-diseased brains as well as in response to neurodegeneration-associated stresses. However, aging and many neurodegeneration-associated proteins and mutations impair autophagy. This creates a…

• GO
  Guarantors of Brain
• RT
  Rosetrees Trust
• RS
  Royal Society Te Apārangi
• CT
  Cambridge Trust
• UD
  UK Dementia Research Institute
• JB
  John Black Charitable Foundation
• TC
  Tau Consortium
• NC
  NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre
• HE
  HORIZON EUROPE Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions