Autophagy, or cellular self-digestion, is an orchestrated cellular pathway crucial for development, differentiation, homeostasis, and survival of cells. The autophagic process is used to eliminate unwanted proteins and damaged organelles and to remove intracellular microbial pathogens. Normal liver function requires hepatocellular basal autophagy. In fact, due to their high biosynthetic activity and role in protein turnover and carbohydrate storage, hepatocytes may be particularly dependent on basal autophagy for their normal physiological functions.

Autophagy seems to play an important role not only in normal liver physiology, but also in the pathogenesis of liver diseases such as nonalcoholic and alcoholic fatty liver, druginduced liver injury, protein conformational liver diseases, viral hepatitis, fibrosis, aging, liver cancer, and liver ischemiareperfusion injury.