Is it the time of autophagy fine-tuners for neuroprotection?

Cells and organisms are intrinsically prepared to effectively deal with damage caused by insults and heal themselves by triggering a plethora of stress responses including macroautophagy/autophagy. However, autophagy may become malfunctional during aging, neurodegeneration, and neurotrauma. We aimed to overcome autophagy dysfunction by refining therapeutics using multi-target approaches. Thus, we have demonstrated that modulation of autophagy with the multitarget drug NeuroHeal is neuroprotective in several neurodegeneration models in which previous autophagy modulators have failed. The key element of success is the coordinated activation of opposing forces that modulate autophagy with NeuroHeal, probably leading to the autophagy-dependent degradation of death executors such as PARP1. The precise tuning of autophagy thus allows the neuron to adapt to insults, survive and repair itself. These findings support the advent a new era of neuroprotectants that counteract neuronal damage by targeting in unison different pathways of the self-repair process, including autophagy.