Review Volume 12, Issue 21 pp 22335—22349
LncRNA-modulated autophagy in plaque cells: a new paradigm of gene regulation in atherosclerosis?
- 1 The Sixth Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Qingyuan City People’s Hospital, Qingyuan, Guangdong, China
- 2 Department of Pathophysiology, School of Basic Medical Sciences, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, Anhui, China
- 3 Department of Pathology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, Anhui, China
- 4 Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Libin Cardiovascular Institute of Alberta, University of Calgary, Health Sciences Center, Calgary, AB, Canada
- 5 Key Laboratory of Molecular Targets and Clinical Pharmacology, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
- 6 The Second Affiliated Hospital of Guilin Medical University, Guangxi Key Laboratory of Diabetic Systems Medicine, Guilin Medical University, Guilin, China
Received: April 21, 2020 Accepted: July 14, 2020 Published: November 4, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.103786How to Cite
Copyright: © 2020 Ren et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
The development of atherosclerosis is accompanied by the functional deterioration of plaque cells, which leads to the escalation of endothelial inflammation, abnormal vascular smooth muscle cell phenotype switching and the accumulation of lipid-laden macrophages within vascular walls. Autophagy, a highly conserved homeostatic mechanism, is critical for the delivery of cytoplasmic substrates to lysosomes for degradation. Moderate levels of autophagy prevent atherosclerosis by safeguarding plaque cells against apoptosis, preventing inflammation, and limiting the lipid burden, whereas excessive autophagy exacerbates cell damage and inflammation and thereby accelerates the formation of atherosclerotic plaques. Increasing lines of evidence suggest that long noncoding RNAs can be either beneficial or detrimental to atherosclerosis development by regulating the autophagy level. This review summarizes the research progress related to 1) the significant role of autophagy in atherosclerosis and 2) the effects of the lncRNA-mediated modulation of autophagy on the plaque cell fate, inflammation levels, proliferative capacity, and cholesterol metabolism and subsequently on atherogenesis.