Tag Archives: thorburn

"In these studies, say we treat cells with the IC-50 of a drug — at that dose, 50 percent of cells should live and 50 percent of cells should die. But the fundamental question is why does cell A die whereas cell B lives? What we show is that the difference may be due to random variation in the amount of autophagy that’s going on," says Andrew Thorburn, PhD, deputy director of the CU Cancer Center. Previous studies show that autophagy promotes cell survival — under conditions of stress or shortage, cells break down non-necessary components to provide energy or use the same strategy to prevent cellular damage by degrading and recycling potentially damaging proteins. …