The Role Of Autophagy In Cancer Treatment

Does it help address the issue or can it actually make things worse?

According to Dr Priya Khorana, who has a PhD in nutrition education from Columbia University,

Autophagy is the body’s way of cleaning out damaged cells, in order to regenerate newer, healthier cells.

“Auto” means self and “phagy” means eat. So the literal meaning of autophagy is “self-eating.”

Autophagy is closely related to phagocytosis, which also deals with the digestion of dead cells. In the case of virus infections, immune cells and antibodies tag the infected cells with specific marker proteins, which are then programmed to commit suicide via apoptosis.

Phagocytes are called upon to digest these dead infected cells to get the nucleic acids (both from the cell DNA and the virus RNA/DNA strands), again for the purpose of synthesising new DNA strands for cell reproduction.

There’s a caveat, though. When the speed of phagocytosis is reduced, the apoptotic cells tend to release pro-inflammatory biochemical products, much like how a dead body that is left on the streets will decompose and give off noxious odours if it is left uncleared on the streets.

The severely diabetic people would face issues with necrosis and gangrene if they suffer accidental cuts to their feet, too:

Therefore, the speed and efficiency of the phagocytosis process is key in an immune system’s response towards viral infections. But this speed is not a quantifiable process, and one can appear “healthy” on the surface even when their internal phagocytosis process is not well or properly regulated.

No doctor will attempt to quantify the efficiency of an autophagy/phagocytosis process in a human body and use it as a benchmark to determine how healthy that person is.

But therein lies the problem