Analysis and Significance of Autophagy in Liver Cancer Cells Induced by Traditional Chinese Medicine / 中国实验方剂学杂志

ABSTRACT

Traditional Chinese medicine(TCM) and its components play a role in the field of anti-hepatocarcinoma. The definition of its mechanism of action in autophagy contributes to the development of TCM in the field of anti-hepatocarcinoma. In this paper, we summarized reports on the autophagy of liver cancer cells induced by TCM and its active ingredients, including those on promoting apoptosis and cycle inhibition induced by autophagy and inhibiting autophagy to block tumor cell cycle, but with a lack of systematic summarization. In this paper, according to different effect of TCM on autophagy induced by hepatocarcinoma, the TCM and its components were inductively analyzed in four aspectsinducing killing autophagy, inhibiting protective autophagy, inducing protective autophagy in liver cancer, and inducing unclear autophagy. According to the findings, TCMs and components that cause killing autophagy can inhibit the occurrence of autophagy, arrest cell cycle, induce cell senescence or promote apoptosis. TCMs and components that inhibit protective autophagy can inhibit protective autophagy and hepatoma cell proliferation. TCMs and components that induce protective autophagy have a significant anti-hepatocarcinoma effect, shall be considered to be combined with autophagy inhibitors to enhance the lethality of drugs on liver cancer cells, and become a new way for such drugs to treat liver cancer. TCMs and components with an unclear inductive effect shall be first identified for their type of autophagy, then combined with autophagy agonists or blockers according to the type of autophagy to enhance their anti-liver cancer effect, and provide a new clinical therapeutic approach for liver cancer. In the aspect of autophagy, this study not only reveals the molecular mechanism of anti-hepatocarcinoma of TCM, but also makes it a new way to study anti-hepatocarcinoma by TCM.