Dear Colleagues,

Macroautophagy (hereafter referred to as autophagy) is a degradation pathway whereby cytosolic double-membrane-bound compartments termed autophagosomes engulf cytoplasmic constituents such as sub-cellular organelles and microbial pathogens and target them for lysosomal degradation. Although in many cases, autophagy contributes to cell death, it has a protective and pro-survival function. Autophagy and apoptosis are two fundamental biological mechanisms that may cooperate or be antagonistic, and both are involved in deciding the fate of cells in physiological or pathological conditions. The functional relationship between apoptosis (‘self-killing’) and autophagy (‘self-eating’) is intricate. Under normal conditions, autophagy is kept at a basal level to maintain cellular homeostasis and to preserve cell integrity by eliminating long-lived, overproduced, and aggregation-prone proteins or dysfunctional organelles such as damaged mitochondria. Under severe or chronic stress, excessive or insufficient autophagy can lead to the accumulation of a large amount of self-degradation or toxic substances, ultimately leading to cell death, which is closely associated with the pathogenesis of various cancers, as well as neurodegenerative, metabolic-related, and immune diseases. Recent studies have shown that stress and pathological conditions regulate autophagy through exosomes and their cargos. Exosomes have been shown to regulate the intracellular autophagic process, which, in turn, affects the circulating exosomes. Exosomes interact with recipient cells primarily via three pathways: (1) phagocytosis, (2) ligand-receptor binding, and (3) membrane fusion.

This Special Issue aims to delineate apoptosis and autophagy as interconnected processes, even overlapping, aimed to signal pathways for final cell fate: the result of the interplay of different cell death programs.  Autophagy classically functions to maintain cell health during stressful conditions by targeting cytosolic components for degradation and recycling via lysosomal pathways. However, accumulating evidence also supports roles for autophagy-related genes (ATGs) in non- degradative processes including cellular secretion. Furthermore it is mandatory focus on the interplay between the endocytic pathway and the autophagic pathway, underlining the emerging connections between autophagy and Ev secretion.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but not limited to) the following:
1. Autophagy and Apoptosis as processes of Survival and cell death, oxidative stress and mitophagy, cellular self-digestion as adaptation to stress able to direct cargo secretion via certain extracellular vesicle (EV) subpopulations.
2. Furthermore the role of autophagy in regulation of cancer cell death/apoptosis during anti-cancer therapy and the different  steps during viral infection in which autophagy is involved

I look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Barbara Canonico
Guest Editor

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• autophagy
• apoptosis
• survival and cell death
• mitophagy
• vesicular trafficking
• cancer therapy
• exocytosis
• exosomes
• viral infection