Telling Cells to Die: Apoptosis Research Takes Off

Extract

An increased understanding of the signals and pathways that regulate apoptotic cell death is hastening the development of chemotherapeutic interventions to control cancer and other diseases affected by these pathways. With the recent cloning of what is thought to be the eleventh and final enzyme that helps regulate apoptosis, the field may now be headed for exponential growth.

“Seventy percent of major medical illnesses can be linked to apoptotic pathways where too little or too much cell death is taking place,” said John C. Reed, M.D., Ph.D., scientific director, Burnham Institute, La Jolla, Calif. Reed noted that on an average day, 70 billion cells are eradicated in a human body, and defects in this eradication process can cause cells to accumulate genetic lesions and lead to genomic instability, resistance to immune attack, and chemoresistance.

In the 1970s, pathologists first noted that radiation and chemotherapy could induce morphological features in cells similar to those that had undergone normal apoptosis. Scientists are just now finding out how the activation of apoptotic stimulatory pathways and inhibition of anti-apoptotic pathways can affect survival chances for patients undergoing chemotherapy.