Marine Compounds as Modulators of Autophagy and Lysosomal Activity

Dear Colleagues,

In 2016, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Prof. Yoshinori Ohsumi for the discoveries of mechanisms of autophagy. Autophagy is a basic physiological process, which has only recently received a lot of attention. This cellular process, which is implicated in many aspects of human physiology and disease, including tissue homeostasis, cancer, neurodegenerative conditions (Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease), cardiomyopathy, and others, is essential for the survival and death of mammalian cells. Thus, it is an exciting perspective to find and develop compounds that have the ability to control and modify this process.
Lysosomes are an essential part of the autophagy machinery which plays a role at the final stages of this process, providing the degradation of the autophagosomes content. Furthermore, lysosomes participate in a vast number of physiological and pathological processes, and may play a role in both drug sensitivity and drug resistance. Several clinically approved compounds target lysosomes as their mode of action.
Compared to terrestrial life forms, marine inhabitants are by far less well studied organisms. At the same time, due to the extreme environmental conditions (high pressure, lack of light, salinity, pH), they harbor a unique variety of chemical compounds, of which a large number still await discovery and characterization. A good proportion of these compounds exhibit potent biological activity, targeting one or several specific biological processes.
This Special Issue “Marine Compounds as Modulators of Autophagy and Lysosomal Activity” in Marine Drugs will cover the whole scope of agents targeting autophagy or/and lysosomes both in vitro and in vivo – novel to previously characterized, including already clinically used marine derived compounds. This Special issue is focused on (but not limited to!) compounds that affect autophagy and lysosomes in malignant cells. In particular, the issue will collect work on compounds that are able to target lysosomes and modulate all the different types of autophagy – i.e. macroautophagy, microautophagy, and chaperone-mediated autophagy – with cytotoxic, cytoprotective, pro-survival, or non-cytotoxic biological activity.
Since autophagy is a relatively new and sometimes still controversial topic, results of similar experiments are often interpreted in different ways. Therefore, the Guest Editors suggest to use the recommendations recently described by Klionsky et al. in the “Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (3rd edition)” (Autophagy. 2016;12(1):1-222; PMID: 26799652) for interpretation of experimental data submitted to this Special Issue.

Sergey A. Dyshlovoy
Friedemann Honecker,
Guest Editors

• autophagy

• macroautophagy

• lysosomes

• lysosomal membrane permeabilization (LMP)

• cathepsins

• marine compounds

• cell death

• cell survival

• drug resistance

• necrosis

• cancer

• neurodegenerative disease