Chemical modulation of autophagy by targeting the mTOR-dependent and mTOR-independent pathways has proven to be of potential biomedical relevance due to therapeutic advantages, especially in neurodegenerative disorders as well as in diverse human pathological conditions such as in certain liver diseases, myopathies, infectious diseases, metabolic diseases, cancer and aging (Rubinsztein et al., 2012; Sarkar, 2013b; Levine et al., 2015). Here, MTOR is linked to metabolic disease.