Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a lethal neurodegenerative disease that usually results in respiratory paralysis in an interval of 2 to 4 years. ALS shows a multifactorial pathogenesis with an unknown etiology, and currently lacks an effective treatment. The vast majority of patients exhibit protein aggregation and a dysfunctional mitochondrial accumulation in their motoneurons. As a result, autophagy and mitophagy modulators may be interesting drug candidates that mitigate key pathological hallmarks of the disease. This work reviews the most relevant evidence that correlate mitophagy defects and ALS, and discusses the possibility of considering mitophagy as an interesting target in the search for an effective treatment for ALS.
Keywords: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; drug target; mitochondria; mitophagy.