Figure 3

Strategies to target mitophagy for cancer therapy. Tumor cells are likely to be more dependent on functional mitophagy than normal cells due the increased requirement to manage ROS levels, due to dependence on key aspects of mitochondrial metabolism, such as glutaminolysis, particularly given the ischemic nature of advanced macroscopic tumors. Such a dependence on mitophagy could be exploited therapeutically by the development of specific small molecule inhibitors of mitophagy that could be combined with other drugs that induce mitochondrial dysfunction, such as respiratory inhibitors or antibiotics, to further increase the requirement for functional mitophagy.