Many clinical therapeutic agents for DKD have been shown to activate autophagy and influence the progression of DKD through different signaling pathways, including the classical drug for lowering sugar - metformin, the classic mTOR target inhibitor - rapamycin, and emerging therapeutic agents such as sodium-glucose cotransporter (SGLT)2 inhibitors and glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) activators (Gonzalez et al., 2021). The gene discussed is SLC5A2; the disease is diabetic kidney disease.