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Autophagy is a central recycling process, and it plays a complex role in cancer. We discovered that when autophagy is blocked, cancer cells compensate by increasing mitochondrial-derived vesicles. However, there are many unanswered questions remaining, particularly in the context of the dual roles of autophagy in cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reduced autophagy has been implicated in aging, yet whether its loss can promote aging phenotypes and pathologies in mammals, and how reversible this process is, has never been fully explored. Using inducible short hairpin RNA (shRNA) mouse models, we have recently shown that autophagy inhibition accelerates aging, and that even a temporary block in autophagy can create irreversible damage that increases a cancer risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mutant RAS-driven cancer cells cope with proliferative stress by increasing basal autophagy to maintain protein/organelle and energy homeostasis. We recently demonstrated that casein kinase 1 alpha (CK1α), a therapeutically tractable enzyme, is critical for fine-tuning the transcriptional regulation of mutant RAS-induced autophagy and the development of mutant RAS-driven cancers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]