Novel autophagy inducers by accelerating lysosomal clustering against Parkinson’s disease

oleh: Yuki Date, Yukiko Sasazawa, Mitsuhiro Kitagawa, Kentaro Gejima, Ayami Suzuki, Hideyuki Saya, Yasuyuki Kida, Masaya Imoto, Eisuke Itakura, Nobutaka Hattori, Shinji Saiki

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: eLife Sciences Publications Ltd 2024-06-01

Deskripsi

The autophagy-lysosome pathway plays an indispensable role in the protein quality control by degrading abnormal organelles and proteins including α-synuclein (αSyn) associated with the pathogenesis of Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, the activation of this pathway is mainly by targeting lysosomal enzymic activity. Here, we focused on the autophagosome-lysosome fusion process around the microtubule-organizing center (MTOC) regulated by lysosomal positioning. Through high-throughput chemical screening, we identified 6 out of 1200 clinically approved drugs enabling the lysosomes to accumulate around the MTOC with autophagy flux enhancement. We further demonstrated that these compounds induce the lysosomal clustering through a JIP4-TRPML1-dependent mechanism. Among them, the lysosomal-clustering compound albendazole promoted the autophagy-dependent degradation of Triton-X-insoluble, proteasome inhibitor-induced aggregates. In a cellular PD model, albendazole boosted insoluble αSyn degradation. Our results revealed that lysosomal clustering can facilitate the breakdown of protein aggregates, suggesting that lysosome-clustering compounds may offer a promising therapeutic strategy against neurodegenerative diseases characterized by the presence of aggregate-prone proteins.