title: Cell death pathology: the war against cancer.
abstract: Programmed cell death was a fundamental discovery, awarded with the Nobel price in 2002 to Sulston, Brenner and Horvitz. Since then it has been clear that alteration of apoptotic pathways is a common feature of tumors, enabling cancer cells to survive chemotherapeutic interventions. Thus, apoptosis is an attractive target in cancer therapy, with the aim to revert the cancer-related alterations of the cell death machinery. Here, we overview the fundamental apoptotic pathways and summarize the attempts to target apoptosis to restore cell death in cancer cells with a special focus on the p53-family and autophagy.
authors.affiliation: MRC Toxicology Unit, Leicester, UK. ar230@le.ac.uk
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rufini
authors.forename: Gerry
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Melino
mesh_terms: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000494:pharmacology / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D017209:Apoptosis; D051017:Apoptosis Regulatory Proteins / Q000378:metabolism; D001343:Autophagy; D006801:Humans; D007093:Imidazoles / Q000494:pharmacology; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000473:pathology*; D010879:Piperazines / Q000494:pharmacology; D055550:Protein Stability; D051736:Proto-Oncogene Proteins c-mdm2 / Q000037:antagonists & inhibitors; D016159:Tumor Suppressor Protein p53 / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D000970:Antineoplastic Agents; D051017:Apoptosis Regulatory Proteins; D007093:Imidazoles; D010879:Piperazines; D016159:Tumor Suppressor Protein p53; C482204:nutlin 2; C497206:MDM2 protein, human; D051736:Proto-Oncogene Proteins c-mdm2