Induction of autophagy by nanoparticles and their application in biomedicine

Autophagy, an important mechanism for maintaining cellular homeostasis, extensively participates in many physiological and pathological processes, and has become one of the hotspots in life sciences research. With more and more extensive application of nanoscience and nanotechnology to biomedicine, induction of autophagy by nanoparticles has attracted much attention by scientists and it becomes a new research direction in nanotoxicology and nanomedicine. This paper briefly introduces the basic situation of autophagy, including types of autophagy, internal/external stimuli, autophagy regulation and associated genes, as well as the great importance of autophagy in life sciences. According to the species of nanoparticles, it focuses on the induction of autophagy by nanoparticles and their application in biomedicine. It is pointed out that in further studies, autophagy induced by nanoparticles should be effectively regulated to prevent disease and promote health.