title: Autophagy in Chronic Kidney Diseases.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Autophagy is the degrading process of protein and organelles mediated by lysosomes. This process is involved in purging senescent organelles and subversive proteins while maintaining the stability of the intracellular environment. This phenomenon is highly conservative, existing in nearly every species, and is involved in cell growth, proliferation and tumorigenesis.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In recent decades, with the discovery of autophagy-related genes and proteins in conjunction with the improvement in detection methods, the study of autophagy is constantly achieving new breakthroughs. It has been discovered that multiple regulatory mechanisms, including Atg protein and its conjugation system, mammalian target of rapamycin upstream and downstream pathways, complex of B-cell lymphoma-2 and Beclin-1c, cellular stress and dual regulation of p53 protein, jointly mediate the process of autophagy. Aberrant autophagy can cause impairment of resident kidney cells and development of various renal diseases.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In this paper, we summarize recent discoveries regarding the development and regulatory mechanisms of autophagy. We also highlight the role of autophagy in the pathogenesis of some kidney diseases, such as diabetic nephropathy, obstructive nephropathy, IgA nephropathy, nephropathic cystinosis, aristolochic acid nephropathy, autoimmune kidney diseases and chronic cyclosporin A-induced nephrotoxicity. These findings provide new insights into the mechanisms of renal diseases and are useful for designing novel therapeutic approaches for the treatment of chronic kidney disease.
authors.affiliation: Department of Nephrology, Shanghai East Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China.
authors.forename: Na
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Nephrology, Shanghai East Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China.
authors.forename: Yingfeng
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.affiliation: Department of Nephrology, Shanghai East Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China; Department of Medicine, Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University School of Medicine, Providence, R.I., USA.
authors.forename: Shougang
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zhuang
keywords: Autophagy; Autophagy-related genes or proteins; Chronic kidney diseases; Mammalian target of rapamycin; Regulatory mechanisms