Macroautophagy (autophagy hereafter) recycles intracellular components to sustain mitochondrial metabolism that promotes the growth, stress tolerance and malignancy of lung cancers, suggesting that autophagy inhibition may have antitumor activity. To assess the functional significance of autophagy in both normal and tumor tissue, we conditionally deleted the essential autophagy gene, autophagy-related-7, Atg7, throughout adult mice. Here we report that systemic ATG7 ablation caused susceptibility to infection and neurodegeneration that limited survival to 2–3 months. Moreover, upon fasting, autophagy-deficient mice suffered fatal hypoglycemia. Prior autophagy ablation did not alter the efficiency of non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) initiation by activation of oncogenic KrasG12D and deletion of the Trp53 tumor suppressor. Acute autophagy ablation in mice with pre-existing NSCLC, however, blocked tumor growth, promoted tumor cell death, and generated more benign disease (oncocytomas). This anti-tumor activity occurred prior to destruction of normal tissues, suggesting that, acute autophagy inhibition may be therapeutically beneficial in cancer.

Autophagy degrades and is thought to recycle proteins, other macromolecules, and organelles. In genetically engineered mouse models (GEMMs) for Kras-driven lung cancer, autophagy prevents the accumulation of defective mitochondria and promotes malignancy. Autophagy-deficient tumor-derived cell lines are respiration-impaired and starvation-sensitive. However, to what extent their sensitivity to starvation arises from defective mitochondria or an impaired supply of metabolic substrates remains unclear. Here, we sequenced the mitochondrial genomes of wild-type or autophagy-deficient (Atg7) Kras-driven lung tumors. Although Atg7 deletion resulted in increased mitochondrial mutations, there were too few nonsynonymous mutations to cause generalized mitochondrial dysfunction. In contrast, pulse-chase studies with isotope-labeled nutrients revealed impaired mitochondrial substrate supply during starvation of the autophagy-deficient cells. This was associated with increased reactive oxygen species (ROS), lower energy charge, and a dramatic drop in total nucleotide pools. While starvation survival of the autophagy-deficient cells was not rescued by the general antioxidant N-acetyl-cysteine, it was fully rescued by glutamine or glutamate (both amino acids that feed the TCA cycle and nucleotide synthesis) or nucleosides. Thus, maintenance of nucleotide pools is a critical challenge for starving Kras-driven tumor cells. By providing bioenergetic and biosynthetic substrates, autophagy supports nucleotide pools and thereby starvation survival.

Therapeutics used to treat central nervous system (CNS) injury were designed to repair neurites and inhibit cell apoptosis. Previous studies have shown that neuron-derived FGF10 exerts potential neuroprotective effects after cerebral ischemia injury. However, little is known about the role of endogenous FGF10 in the recovery process after spinal cord injury (SCI). In this study, we found that FGF10 is mainly produced by neuron and microglia/macrophages, and its expression is increased after SCI. Exogenous treatment of FGF10 improved functional recovery after injury by reducing apoptosis, as well as repairing neurites via FGFR2/PI3K/Akt pathway. On another hand, inhibiting the PI3K/Akt pathway with LY294002 partially reversed the therapeutic effects of FGF10. In addition, small interfering RNA knockdown of FGFR2 suppressed PI3K/Akt pathway activation by FGF10 and abolished its anti-apoptotic and neurite repair effects in vitro. Furthermore, FGF10 treatment inhibited the activation and proliferation of microglia/macrophages through regulation of TLR4/NF-κB pathway, and attenuated the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines after SCI. Thus, the increased expression of FGF10 after acute SCI is an endogenous self-protective response, suggesting that FGF10 could be a potential treatment for CNS injury.

Summary Ras-driven cancer cells upregulate basal autophagy that degrades and recycles intracellular proteins and organelles. Autophagy-mediated proteome degradation provides free amino acids to support metabolism and macromolecular synthesis, which confers a survival advantage in starvation and promotes tumorigenesis. While the degradation of isolated protein substrates by autophagy has been implicated in controlling cellular function, the extent and specificity by which autophagy remodels the cellular proteome and the underlying functional consequences were unknown. Here we compared the global proteome of autophagy-functional and -deficient Ras-driven cancer cells, finding that autophagy affects the majority of the proteome yet is highly selective. While levels of vesicle trafficking proteins important for autophagy are preserved during starvation-induced autophagy, deleterious inflammatory response pathway components are eliminated even under basal conditions, preventing cytokine-induced paracrine cell death. This reveals the global, functional impact of autophagy-mediated proteome remodeling on cell survival and identifies critical autophagy substrates that mediate this process.

Under conditions leading to aging and metabolic syndrome, the hypothalamus atypically undergoes proinflammatory signaling activation leading to a chronic and stable background inflammation, referred to as ''hypothalamic microinflammation.'' Through the past decade of research, progress has been made to causally link this hypothalamic inflammation to the mechanism of aging as well as metabolic syndrome, promoting the ''hypothalamic microinflammation'' theory, which helps characterize the consensus of these epidemic health problems. In general, it is consistently appreciated that hypothalamic microinflammation emerges during the early stages of aging and metabolic syndrome and evolves to be multifaceted and advanced alongside disease progression, while inhibition of key inflammatory components in the hypothalamus has a broad range of effects in counteracting these disorders. Herein, focusing on aging and metabolic syndrome, this writing aims to provide an overview of and insights into the mediators, signaling components, cellular impacts, and physiological significance of this hypothalamic microinflammation.