Autophagy in neuroinflammatory diseases

Autophagy is a metabolically-central process that is crucial in diverse areas of cell physiology. It ensures a fair balance between life and death molecular and cellular flows, and any disruption in this vital intracellular pathway can have consequences leading to major diseases such as cancer, metabolic and neurodegenerative disorders, and cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases. Recent pharmacological studies have shown evidence that small molecules and peptides able to activate or inhibit autophagy might be valuable therapeutic agents by down- or up-regulating excessive or defective autophagy, or to modulate normal autophagy to allow other drugs to repair some cell alteration or destroy some cell subsets (e.g. in the case of cancer concurrent treatments). Here, we provide an overview of neuronal autophagy and of its potential implication in some inflammatory diseases of central and peripheral nervous systems. Based on our own studies centred on a peptide called P140 that targets autophagy, we highlight the validity of autophagy processes, and in particular of chaperone-mediated autophagy, as a particularly pertinent pathway for developing novel selective therapeutic approaches for treating some neuronal diseases. Our findings with the P140 peptide support a direct cross-talk between autophagy and certain central and peripheral neuronal diseases. They also illustrate the fact that autophagy alterations are not evenly distributed across all organs and tissues of the same individual, and can evolve in different stages along the disease course.