Apoptosis in cancer: from pathogenesis to treatment

By Rebecca S. Y. Wong. Journal of experimental & clinical cancer research : CR, 2011

2,693 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Apoptosis is an ordered and orchestrated cellular process that occurs in physiological and pathological conditions. It is also one of the most studied topics among cell biologists. An understanding of the underlying mechanism of apoptosis is important as it plays a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of many diseases. In some, the problem is due to too much apoptosis, such as in the case of degenerative diseases while in others, too little apoptosis is the culprit. Cancer is one of the scenarios where too little apoptosis occurs, resulting in malignant cells that will not die. The mechanism of apoptosis is complex and involves many pathways. Defects can occur at any point along these pathways, leading to malignant transformation of the affected cells, tumour metastasis and resistance to anticancer drugs. Despite being the cause of problem, apoptosis plays an important role in the treatment of cancer as it is a popular target of many treatment strategies. The abundance of literature suggests that targeting apoptosis in cancer is feasible. However, many troubling questions arise with the use of new drugs or treatment strategies that are designed to enhance apoptosis and critical tests must be passed before they can be used safely in human subjects.

Subfields: Molecular Biology, Oncology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/54355239cb13cfdfd92d3c9ad8d5d1b02835d887

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In Molecular Biology

1. Ka-Lok Ng
2. Chi-Ying F. Huang
3. Chien-Hung Huang
4. Chia-Wei Hsu
5. Peter Mu-Hsin Chang

Citations in the corpus

• A Review of Curcumin and Its Derivatives as Anticancer Agents (2019, background): “One of the main causes of cancer is the loss of balance between cell proliferation and cell death [88].”
• Drug repositioning for non-small cell lung cancer by using machine learning algorithms and topological graph theory (2016, background): “Although defective apoptosis is critical to the development and progression of cancer, apoptosis is important in the treatment of cancer as it is a popular target of many treatment strategies [54].”
• Apoptosis as anticancer mechanism: function and dysfunction of its modulators and targeted therapeutic strategies (2016, background): “Both pathways converge to activate the effector apoptotic caspases resulting ultimately in morphological and biochemical cellular alterations, characteristics of apoptosis [2].”
• Flavonoids in Cancer and Apoptosis (2018, background): “Thus, a profound understanding of apoptotic mechanisms and related pathways not only serves in comprehending the disease but also in disease treatment [8].”
• Apoptosis, autophagy, necroptosis, and cancer metastasis (2015, neutral): “promotes p53 ubiquitination and degradation [9,10].”