Figure 2.

The strategies of modulating miRNAs to combat chemoresistance through autophagy. After chemotherapy is applied, sensitive cancer cells mainly undergo apoptotic cell death process whereas chemoresistant cancer cells fail to respond to chemotherapeutics. The pro-survival autophagy contributes to the development of chemoresistance. However, pro-death autophagy can be used as an alternative cell death mechanism in apoptosis-inactive cancer cells to re-sensitize them. Based on these facts, inhibition of pro-survival autophagy and induction of pro-death autophagy may result in chemoresistance reversal, which can be done by overexpression or inhibition of these miRNAs in different types of cancer. ⊥ indicates an inhibitory effect and → indicates a promoting effect.