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Relationship Between ROS, Autophagy, and Cancer

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Handbook of Oxidative Stress in Cancer: Mechanistic Aspects

Abstract

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) used to be perceived as harmful cellular weaponry designed to eliminate pathogens, whereas autophagy as the process for the disintegration and re-utilization of cytoplasm. Both pathways respond to cellular stress and are evolutionary conserved, ubiquitous in modern organisms, necessary for development and important in the pathogeny of chronic diseases. The activity of the ROS pathway depends on spatial confinement of its proteins, the exposition of sensor’s cysteines to the solvent of regulatory proteins, the oxidation-driven conformational and oligomeric change of these proteins, and the limitation of the diffusion of ROS. ROS determine autophagy pathway activity exerting similar changes on crucial autophagy proteins, namely, ATG4, 3, 7, and 8, as well as the regulatory proteins AMPK and mTOR. The intricated relationship of ROS and autophagy pathways is determinant for the proper functioning of both pathways.

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Correspondence to Rubén G. Contreras .

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Campos-Blázquez, J. et al. (2022). Relationship Between ROS, Autophagy, and Cancer. In: Chakraborti, S., Ray, B.K., Roychoudhury, S. (eds) Handbook of Oxidative Stress in Cancer: Mechanistic Aspects. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9411-3_167

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