DAMPs and autophagy: cellular adaptation to injury and unscheduled cell death.

Autophagy is a lysosome-mediated catabolic process involving the degradation of intracellular contents (e.g., proteins and organelles) as well as invading microbes (e.g., parasites, bacteria and viruses). Multiple forms of cellular stress can stimulate this pathway, including nutritional imbalances, oxygen deprivation, immunological response, genetic defects, chromosomal anomalies and cytotoxic stress. Damage-associated molecular pattern molecules (DAMPs) are released by stressed cells undergoing autophagy or injury, and act as endogenous danger signals to regulate the subsequent inflammatory and immune response. A complex relationship exists between DAMPs and autophagy in cellular adaption to injury and unscheduled cell death. Since both autophagy and DAMPs are important for pathogenesis of human disease, it is crucial to understand how they interplay to sustain homeostasis in stressful or dangerous environments.