Table 1 Summary of autophagy roles in both T and NK cells in human and other organisms

Autophagy during T cell differentiation

[10]

[11,12,13, 15,16,17]

Autophagy in regulatory T cells (Treg)

[20, 23, 24, 27, 28]

[18,19,20,21,22, 24, 28]

Autophagy in CD4⁺ T helper cells

[32, 35]

[22, 29, 30, 32,33,34, 36, 37]

Autophagy in CD4⁺ and CD8⁺ memory T cells formation

[41, 43]

[38,39,40,41,42,43]

[39]

Autophagy upon T cell activation

[41, 43, 47, 63, 64, 66, 67]

[21, 40,41,42,43, 48, 49, 51, 53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67]

Autophagy and generation of energy upon T cell activation

[63, 69]

[34, 48, 63]

Relationship between cytokines release and autophagy in T cells

[32, 63, 64, 72]

[21, 22, 32, 40, 42, 48, 49, 51, 55, 62,63,64, 73,74,75]

Autophagy and T cell homeostasis

[53, 55, 57]

Impact of mitophagy on T cell survival and homeostasis

[63, 69, 72, 79, 83, 85, 87, 89, 90]

[21, 30, 48, 53, 55, 56, 58, 63, 80, 84, 86,87,88, 90]

Autophagy and ER in T cell survival and homeostasis

[66, 92, 99, 100, 103]

[40, 54, 66, 93, 94, 96,97,98,99,100]

Impact of autophagy on T cell survival and cell death

[106]

[30, 49, 106]

Autophagy in NK cell differentiation

[126, 128, 130]

[123,124,125,126,127,128, 130, 131, 133, 134]

[129]

Mitochondria-related processes in NK cells

[114, 137, 139, 140, 142,143,144, 146]

[124, 134, 138, 146]

Autophagy in natural killer T cells (NKT)

[150,151,152]

[21, 36, 148,149,150,151,152,153]

Autophagy at the interface between cancer cells and NK/T cell effector functions

[159, 160, 162, 167]

[154, 159,160,161,162, 166, 168]

Hypoxia-induced autophagy in cytotoxic T and NK cell activity

[170, 181,182,183,184,185, 189]

[154, 174,175,176, 178, 182, 184, 187]

Autophagy shapes NK and T cell trafficking in tumors

[190, 192, 195]

[166, 190]

Potential clinical application

[192, 203, 204, 211]

[193, 203, 204, 211]