Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome and Obesity (Jun 2021)
Lipophagy: A New Perspective of Natural Products in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus Treatment
Abstract
Mingyue Huang,1,2,* Xinyu Yang,2,* Zhenzhen Wang,3 Jianglan Long,3 Aiting Wang,3 Yi Zhang,4 Dan Yan3 1College of Pharmacy, Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, 611130, People’s Republic of China; 2Beijing Key Laboratory of Bio-Characteristic Profiling for Evaluation of Rational Drug Use, Beijing Shijitan Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, 100038, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Pharmacy, Beijing Friendship Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, 100050, People’s Republic of China; 4Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Natural Medicine, Chongqing Institute for Food and Drug Control, Chongqing, 401121, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Dan YanDepartment of Pharmacy, Beijing Friendship Hospital, Capital Medical University, No. 95, Yong’an Road, Xicheng District, Beijing, 100050, People’s Republic of ChinaTel +86 10-63139318Email [email protected] ZhangDepartment of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Natural Medicine, Chongqing Institute for Food and Drug Control, No. 1, Chunlan 2nd Road, Yubei District, Chongqing, 401121, People’s Republic of ChinaTel +86 23-86072771Email [email protected]: Autophagy has been reported to involve in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), which protects the insulin target tissues and pancreatic β-cells. However, autophagy is inhibited when the cells are lipid overload. That, in turn, increases the accumulation of fat. Lipotoxicity caused by excessive lipid accumulation contributes to pathogenesis of T2DM. Therefore, it is undeniable to break the vicious circles between lipid excess and autophagy deficiency. Lipophagy, a selective form of autophagy, is characterized by selective breakdown of lipid droplets (LDs). The nutritional status of cells contributes to the way of autophagy (selective or non-selective), while selective autophagy helps to accurately remove excess substances. It seems that lipophagy could be an effective means to decrease abnormal lipid accumulation that leads to insulin resistance and β-cell impairment by removing ectopic LDs. Based on this process, many natural compounds have been reported to decrease lipid accumulation in tissues through autophagy-lysosomal pathway, which gradually highlights the significance of lipophagy. In this review, we focus on the mechanisms that lipophagy improves T2DM and natural products that are applied to induce lipophagy. It is also suggested that natural herbs with rich contents of natural products inducing lipophagy would be potential candidates for alleviating T2DM.Keywords: lipophagy, lipid metabolism, type 2 diabetes mellitus, autophagy, natural products
