细胞自噬（autophagy）是一种进化上高度保守的饥饿应答机制，是细胞利用溶酶体降解自身受损的细胞器和大分子物质的过程，这一特定的过程是细胞存活、分化、发育以及维持内环境稳定的重要机制。同时，自噬参与神经退行性疾病、心脑血管疾病、肿瘤等重大疾病的病理过程，调节细胞自噬是防治上述疾病的重要途径之一。近年研究发现多种中药有效成分可调节肿瘤细胞、神经细胞、心肌细胞、内皮细胞自噬，综述了近3年国内外对中药有效成分调节细胞自噬的研究进展，以供参考。

Autophagy, as a high conserved starvation response mechanism with defensive and protective effects in eukaryotic cell, is a lysosome-mediated degradation process for non-essential or damaged cellular constituents. It plays an important homeostatic role in cell survival, differentiation, and development to maintain the homeostasis. Autophagy is involved in neurodegenerative disease, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, and tumor. Thus, modulating autophagy may provide the potential therapeutic strategies. Recently, many active components of Chinese materia medica (CMM) have been found with the modulatting function on the autophagy in tumor cell, nerve cell, myocardial cell, and endothelial cell. This paper mainly reviews the advances in researches on the active components of CMM for modulating autophagy in recent three years.

国家自然科学基金资助项目（81274004）；江苏省高等学校优秀科技创新团队项目（苏教科[2011]11号）