Identification of Novel Autophagy Inhibitors via Cell-Based High-Content Screening

Autophagy is a fundamental cellular catabolic pathway mediating the recycling of cellular components. Autophagy has been implicated in pathogenesis of diverse diseases such as neurodegeneration and cancer. Due to the therapeutic potential, the autophagy-modulating agents have profoundly enriched the spectrum of tools used to investigate autophagy. However, many of these compounds have additional off-target effects that may confound elucidation of autophagy in certain contexts. There remains high demand for highly specific and novel chemotypes that can be used to study the regulation mechanism of autophagy and contribute novel pharmacophores for therapeutic purposes. Here, we describe a cell-based quantitative high-content screening (HCS) for autophagy inhibitors using a human breast adenocarcinoma MCF7 cell line stably expressing EGFP-LC3, a bona fide marker of autophagy.