Autophagic cell death: the story of a misnomer

By Guido Kroemer, Beth Levine. Nature reviews. Molecular cell biology, 2008

1,515 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Dying cells often display a large-scale accumulation of autophagosomes and hence adopt a morphology called autophagic cell death. In many cases, it is agreed that this autophagic cell death is cell death with autophagy rather than cell death by autophagy. Here, we evaluate the accumulating body of literature that argues that cell death occurs by autophagy. We also list the caveats that must be considered when deciding whether or not autophagy is an important effector mechanism of cell death.

Subfields: Epidemiology, Pharmacology, Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/12f243e502d21d0dce5d3e5ea84c05853b9ae598

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Citations in the corpus

Autophagy‐based unconventional secretory pathway for extracellular delivery of IL‐1β (2011, background): “For the most part, autophagy enables cellular viability (Kroemer and Levine, 2008; Kroemer et al, 2010) by removing damaged organelles, for example, depolarized or leaky mitochondria (Youle and Narendra, 2011), digesting potentially toxic protein aggregates (Renna et al, 2010),…”
Molecular definitions of cell death subroutines: recommendations of the Nomenclature Committee on Cell Death 2012 (2011, background): “Although originally this expression did not imply any functional consideration, scientists have quickly adopted the term ‘autophagic cell death’ and used it to imply that autophagy would actually execute the cell demise.(89) This applies to at least two very distinct settings.”
Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (2012, background): “Claim (c) is still stronger, because, even if the cell death is blocked by autophagy inhibition, proof needs to be provided that the cell death mechanism is not apoptosis or necrosis.(670) In view of the current confusion it may be preferable to replace the term “autophagic cell death” by other term”
Autophagy-Dependent Ferroptosis: Machinery and Regulation (2020, background): “Increased autophagy appears to be widely observed during cell death, and the term “autophagic cell death” has been used to describe type II cell death according to morphological alterations (Kroemer and Levine, 2008).”
Principles and Current Strategies for Targeting Autophagy for Cancer Treatment (2011, background): “cells to survive through autophagy, also known as cell death with autophagic features (43).”
Anti-apoptosis and cell survival: a review. (2011, background): “For example, autophagic like PCD occurs in response to apoptotic stimuli in cells that are unable to carry out apoptosis due to pharmacological inhibition or due to specific gene knockouts (double Bak and Bax KOs) [25,342,377].”
Microautophagy: lesser-known self-eating (2011, neutral): “While cells may suicide by means of pro-death mechanisms supported by autophagy, which is correlated with programmed cell death (PCD), autophagic cell death is also known as type II PCD [5].”
Autophagy and aging. (2011, background): “Autophagy is a predominantly cytoprotective (rather than a self-destructive) process (Kroemer and Levine, 2008).”
Mitotic catastrophe: a mechanism for avoiding genomic instability (2011, background): “The existence of bona fide autophagic cell death (that is, an autophagy-dependent cell death modality characterized by extensive cytoplasmic vacuolization) remains debate”
The dynamic nature of autophagy in cancer. (2011, background): “One must also be cautious in these cases, as while there are data for autophagy as a cell death mechanism in organisms such as Drosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans, in vivo data in mammalian systems are lacking (Debnath et al. 2005; Kroemer and Levine 2008).”
Essential versus accessory aspects of cell death: recommendations of the NCCD 2015 (2014, background): “, the appearance of autophagic vacuoles in the course of type II cell death) only, but it soon became misused to imply that the molecular machinery of autophagy would actively contribute to the cellular demise.(75) The NCCD strongly recommends the use of the expression ‘autophagic cell death’ from a”
Cell Death Signaling. (2015, background): “This form of cell death is therefore often referred to as caspase-independent cell death accompanied by autophagy (Kroemer and Levine 2008; Shen et al. 2012).”
Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (3rd edition) (2012, neutral): “Claim (c) is still stronger, because, even if the cell death is blocked by autophagy inhibition, proof needs to be provided that the cell death mechanism is not apoptosis or necrosis.(1087) In view of the current confusion it may be preferable to replace the term “autophagic cell death” by other ter”