Such a nice smile
“Autophagy” means “self-eating”, and the various autophagous
processes are akin to urban garbage-disposal systems; they identify, transport
and dispose of unwanted, sometimes dangerous, cellular elements. In macroautophagy, for instance, the damaged
stuff is enclosed in a double membrane, then hauled off to an organelle known
as a lysosome, where it is degraded and recycled. Without autophagy our cells
would soon come to resemble my garage; so stuffed with junk as to be
essentially non-functional.
There seem to be diseases that stem from haywire autophagy,
and there are drugs that combat these diseases.
Playing, it seems, on a hunch, people at U.C. San Diego have shown that
these same drugs are effective against OVCA – at least in rats. More trials are in progress.
Make it so!
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