Autophagy inducers like trehalose (Gomes et al., 2010) and
resveratrol (Kim et al., 2007) have also shown beneficial effects by decreasing protein aggregation and promoting neuronal survival.
However, rapamycin which is a mTOR dependent inducer of
autophagy, has had detrimental effects on motor neurons in the
SOD1 mouse model of ALS (Zhang et al., 2011). Results of a recent
study show that this controversy may be related to the stage of the
disease. Accordingly, food restriction, another established autophagy
inducer, show potential protective effects on the spinal cord
of SOD1-G93A mice, only at onset stage but not at pre-end stage of
ALS (Zhang et al., 2013). Table 1 briefly summarizes the role of
macroautophagy in ALS.