Abstract
Lung cancer remains a life-threatening malignancy with complex pathogenesis. This paper provides a systematic review of autophagy and ferroptosis-related signaling pathways, key regulatory factors, and their associated mechanisms, including the nuclear receptor coactivator 4 (NCOA4)-mediated ferritin autophagy-ferroptosis axis, mitochondrial autophagy, lipid droplet autophagy, circadian autophagy, chaperone-mediated autophagy, etc.. The review elucidates the roles of the tumor microenvironment and non-coding RNAs in autophagy-ferroptosis processes in lung cancer. Furthermore, it explores the potential of modern drugs and active components from traditional Chinese medicine to improve lung cancer outcomes by targeting autophagy and ferroptosis, proposing that targeting their interactive pathways could offer novel therapeutic strategies for lung cancer.
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