Dementia Japan 29:430-439, 2015

Autophagy and its significance on dementia

Tomoki Morita, Kaori Watanabe, Masashi Asai, Nobuhisa Iwata, Keiro Shirotani

Department of Genome-based Drug Discovery, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Nagasaki University

    Most neurodegenerative diseases with dementia are associated with intracellular deposition of aggregated or misfolded proteins in neurons.  Autophagy is a critical process for removing such unwanted proteins.  Over recent years, evidence has accumulated that autophagy dysfunction has been implicated in the pathogenesis of various neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer's disease and that upregulation of autophagy may protect against the disease development.  This review summarizes the recent progress how disturbances in autophagy are linked with the disease pathogenesis and the potential therapeutic strategies aimed at modulation of autophagy.

Address correspondence to Dr. Keiro Shirotani, Department of Genome-based Drug Discovery, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Nagasaki University (1-14 Bunkyo-machi, Nagasaki-shi, Nagasaki 852-8521, Japan)