Identification of natural products with neuronal and metabolic benefits through autophagy induction.

ABSTRACT: Autophagy is a housekeeping lysosomal degradation pathway important for cellular survival, homeostasis and function. Various disease models have shown that upregulation of autophagy may be beneficial to combat disease pathogenesis. However, despite several recently reported small-molecule screens for synthetic autophagy inducers, natural chemicals of diverse structures and functions have not been included in the synthetic libraries, and characterization of their roles in autophagy has been lacking. To discover novel autophagy-regulating compounds and study their therapeutic mechanisms, we used analytic chemistry approaches to isolate natural phytochemicals from a reservoir of medicinal plants used in traditional remedies. From this pilot plant metabolite library, we identified several nove

SUBMITTER: Fan Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5240827 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature