[Autophagy pathways and key drug targets in Parkinson's disease]

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disorder associated with aging. Great progresses have been made toward understanding the pathogenesis over the past decades. It seems that both genetic factors and environmental factors contribute to PD, while the precise pathogenesis still remains unknown. Recently, increasing evidence has suggested that autophagy dysregulation is closely related to PD. Dysregulation of the autophagic pathways has been observed in the brains of PD patients or in animal models of PD, and a number of PD-associated proteins, such as a-synuclein, Parkin and PINK1, were found to involve in autophagy, suggesting a link between autophagy and pathogenesis of PD. In this review, we summarized the role of PD-associated proteins in autophagy pathways. In addition, we described the efficacy of autophagy-modulating compounds in PD models and discussed promising strategies for PD therapy.