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Human Health Effects
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The impact of nanomaterials on autophagy across health and disease conditions
Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences2024
33 citations
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Citation count from OpenAlex, updated daily. May differ slightly from the publisher's own count.
Score: 65
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0–100 AI score estimating relevance to the microplastics field. Papers below 30 are filtered from public browse.
Researchers examined how nanomaterials — including nanoplastics — interact with autophagy, the cell's internal recycling and cleanup system. Depending on the type and dose, nanoplastics can either trigger helpful cellular defense responses or push cells toward self-destruction, a dual nature that has important implications for both environmental health and the design of nanomaterial-based medicines.
Autophagy, a catabolic process integral to cellular homeostasis, is constitutively active under physiological and stress conditions. The role of autophagy as a cellular defense response becomes particularly evident upon exposure to nanomaterials (NMs), especially environmental nanoparticles (NPs) and nanoplastics (nPs). This has positioned autophagy modulation at the forefront of nanotechnology-based therapeutic interventions. While NMs can exploit autophagy to enhance therapeutic outcomes, they can also trigger it as a pro-survival response against NP-induced toxicity. Conversely, a heightened autophagy response may also lead to regulated cell death (RCD), in particular autophagic cell death, upon NP exposure. Thus, the relationship between NMs and autophagy exhibits a dual nature with therapeutic and environmental interventions. Recognizing and decoding these intricate patterns are essential for pioneering next-generation autophagy-regulating NMs. This review delves into the present-day therapeutic potential of autophagy-modulating NMs, shedding light on their status in clinical trials, intervention of autophagy in the therapeutic applications of NMs, discusses the potency of autophagy for application as early indicator of NM toxicity.