Autophagic compound database: A resource connecting autophagy-modulating compounds, their potential targets and relevant diseases.

OBJECTIVES: Autophagy, a highly conserved lysosomal degradation process in eukaryotic cells, can digest long-lived proteins and damaged organelles through vesicular trafficking pathways. Nowadays, mechanisms of autophagy have been gradually elucidated and thus the discovery of small-molecule drugs targeting autophagy has always been drawing much attention. So far, some autophagy-related web servers have been available online to facilitate scientists to obtain the information relevant to autophagy conveniently, such as HADb, CTLPScanner, iLIR server and ncRDeathDB. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is not any web server available about the autophagy-modulating compounds.

METHODS: According to published articles, all the compounds and their relations with autophagy were anatomized. Subsequently, an online Autophagic Compound Database (ACDB) (https://www.acdbliulab.com/) was constructed, which contained information of 357 compounds with 164 corresponding signalling pathways and potential targets in different diseases.

RESULTS: We achieved a great deal of information of autophagy-modulating compounds, including compounds, targets/pathways and diseases. ACDB is a valuable resource for users to access to more than 300 curated small-molecule compounds correlated with autophagy.

CONCLUSIONS: Autophagic compound database will facilitate to the discovery of more novel therapeutic drugs in the near future.