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Updated: Oct 16, 2025

Exploring the Regulation of Lipid Droplet Catabolism through Lipophagy
Published on: January 31, 2025
Autophagy plays a double-edged sword role in liver diseases
Jing-Chao Zhou1,2, Jing-Lin Wang1, Hao-Zhen Ren3
1Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital, the Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, China.
Abstract:
As a highly evolutionarily conserved process, autophagy can be found in all types of eukaryotic cells. Such a constitutive process maintains cellular homeostasis in a wide variety of cell types through the encapsulation of damaged proteins or organelles into double-membrane vesicles. Autophagy not only simply eliminates materials but also serves as a dynamic recycling system that produces new building blocks and energy for cellular renovation and homeostasis. Previous studies have primarily recognized the role of autophagy in the degradation of dysfunctional proteins and unwanted organelles. However, there are findings of autophagy in physiological and pathological processes. In hepatocytes, autophagy is not only essential for homeostatic functions but also implicated in some diseases, such as viral hepatitis, alcoholic hepatitis, and hepatic failure. In the present review, we summarized the molecular mechanisms of autophagy and its role in several liver diseases and put forward several new strategies for the treatment of liver disease.
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