Tumor Environment Determines Whether The Cellular Process Autophagy Enables Cancer Cells To Live Or Die

Expression of the gene ARHI is lost or downregulated in most cases of ovarian cancer. In the study, in vitro re-expression of ARHI in multiple human ovarian cancer cell lines induced autophagy and cell death.

However, when one of these cells lines was transplanted into mice as a xenograft, multiple factors within the tumor environment turned ARHI-induced autophagy into a mechanism of tumor cell survival, leading to tumor dormancy.

In addition to providing insight into the paradox that autophagy is associated with both cancer cell death and survival, the authors suggest that the data might provide new therapeutic approaches for the treatment of cancer.

Ravi Amaravadi, at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, discusses this further in an accompanying commentary.