pharmaceuticals Review Autophagy as a Potential Therapy for Malignant Glioma Angel Escamilla-Ramírez 1 , Rosa A. Castillo-Rodríguez 2 , Sergio Zavala-Vega 3, Dolores Jimenez-Farfan 4 , Isabel Anaya-Rubio 1, Eduardo Briseño 5, Guadalupe Palencia 1, Patricia Guevara 1, Arturo Cruz-Salgado 1, Julio Sotelo 1 and Cristina Trejo-Solís 1,* 1 Departamento de Neuroinmunología, Instituto Nacional de Neurología y Neurocirugía, Ciudad de México 14269, Mexico;
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[email protected] (J.S.) 2 Laboratorio de Oncología Experimental, CONACYT-Instituto Nacional de Pediatría, Ciudad de México 04530, Mexico;
[email protected] 3 Departamento de Patología, Instituto Nacional de Neurología y Neurocirugía, Ciudad de México 14269, Mexico;
[email protected] 4 Laboratorio de Inmunología, División de Estudios de Posgrado e Investigación, Facultad de Odontología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad de México 04510, Mexico;
[email protected] 5 Clínica de Neurooncología, Instituto Nacional de Neurología y Neurocirugía, Ciudad de México 14269, Mexico;
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[email protected]; Tel.: +52-555-060-4040 Received: 5 June 2020; Accepted: 14 July 2020; Published: 19 July 2020 Abstract: Glioma is the most frequent and aggressive type of brain neoplasm, being anaplastic astrocytoma (AA) and glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), its most malignant forms. The survival rate in patients with these neoplasms is 15 months after diagnosis, despite a diversity of treatments, including surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and immunotherapy. The resistance of GBM to various therapies is due to a highly mutated genome; these genetic changes induce a de-regulation of several signaling pathways and result in higher cell proliferation rates, angiogenesis, invasion, and a marked resistance to apoptosis; this latter trait is a hallmark of highly invasive tumor cells, such as glioma cells.