When it comes to respiratory bacterial infections, autophagy is necessary for a complete immune response. Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) is an intercellular pathogen that causes tuberculosis. M. tuberculosis evades the body’s immune response by forming granulomas and blocks phagolysosome trafficking to inhibit the intracellular killing of pathogens [71,72,73]. Recently, studies have demonstrated the importance of functional autophagy in targeting and killing M. tuberculosis in respiratory cells by showing that the induction of autophagy pathways overcomes the inhibition of phagolysosome formation to effectively kill M. tuberculosis [6,74,75].