Autophagy is a collection of cellular maintenance processes that act to recycle damaged structures in the cell, thereby maintaining cell health and function. On the one hand, the efficiency of autophagy declines with age, and this loss of function is associated with numerous age-related diseases, particularly of the central nervous system and its population of very long-lived neurons. On the other hand, increased autophagy is an important component of many of the interventions shown to slow aging in short-lived species, such as via calorie restriction. A fair number of research groups are working on ways to upregulate autophagy in our species, but this has been going on for a while with little concrete movement towards the clinic.

Autophagy is a complicated process of multiple steps, and at every step there are plausible proximate causes for a faltering of the system with age. The formation of autophagosomes to encapsulate materials to be recycled can break down, as is the case in today's open access paper. The mechanisms by which autophagosomes are transported to a lysosome for deconstruction of their contents are degraded. The lysosome itself becomes filled with metabolic waste that it struggles to break down, making it bloated and inefficient.

In the case of defects relating to autophagosomes it is unclear as to why the breakage happens, how it relates to the underlying molecular damage that causes aging. Given this, approaches to therapy tend to focus on overriding proximate changes. Researchers find regulatory systems that can be adjusted in order to force the relevant mechanism to work despite its normal reaction to systemic damage in and around cells. In principle this should always be worse as a strategy than identifying and repairing the damage, but it can produce benefits in some cases. In the example here, researchers find a way to override the failure to form autophagosomes that is observed in old neurons.

Expression of WIPI2B counteracts age-related decline in autophagosome biogenesis in neurons