The Roles of Autophagy in Mediating Inflammation and Autoimmunity

Dear Colleagues,

The autophagy-lysosomal pathway was discovered as an evolutionarily conserved bulk degradation pathway. It is the only known pathway in eukaryotic cells to degrade large protein aggregates, damaged organelles, and foreign materials, including intracellular pathogens.

However, recent studies have discovered several non-degradative roles of autophagy in the immune system. Autophagy plays an intricate part in engulfing and eliminating several pathogens, and many pathogens have evolved sophisticated mechanisms to evade or suppress autophagy. Autophagy also mediates antigen presentation by different antigen-presenting cells and regulates the development and activation of lymphocytes. Additionally, autophagy plays a crucial role as an intracellular stress-sensing pathway, interacting with inflammasomes and regulating cytokine secretion. The role of autophagy in mediating other secretory pathways in several immune and non-immune cells, a mechanism called secretory autophagy, is an emerging theme. These findings established the autophagy pathway as a multifaceted polyfunctional mechanism to mediate several aspects of the immune functions.

This Special Issue aims to collect recent research related to the autophagy pathway and its role in mediating inflammation and autoimmunity. We hope to provide a broad overview of how autophagy in different cells mediates different immune functions and help understand how this pathway may be exploited for therapeutic approaches to different diseases.

Dr. Abhisek Bhattacharya
Dr. Lang Rao
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Biology is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• autophagy
• inflammation