Apoptosis: Activation and Inhibition in Health and Disease

Abstract

There are many types of cell death, each involving multiple and complex molecular events. Cell death can occur accidentally when exposed to extreme physical, chemical, or mechanical conditions, or it can also be regulated, which involves a genetically coded complex machinery to carry out the process. Apoptosis is an example of the latter. Apoptotic cell death can be triggered through different intracellular signalling pathways that lead to morphological changes and eventually cell death. This is a normal and biological process carried out during maturation, remodelling, growth, and development in tissues. To maintain tissue homeostasis, regulatory, and inhibitory mechanisms must control apoptosis. Paradoxically, these same pathways are utilized during infection by distinct intracellular microorganisms to evade recognition by the immune system and therefore survive, reproduce and develop. In cancer, neoplastic cells inhibit apoptosis, thus allowing their survival and increasing their capability to invade different tissues and organs. The purpose of this work is to review the generalities of the molecular mechanisms and signalling pathways involved in apoptosis induction and inhibition. Additionally, we compile the current evidence of apoptosis modulation during cancer and Leishmania infection as a model of apoptosis regulation by an intracellular microorganism.

The Biological Impacts of Sitagliptin on the Pancreas of a Rat Model of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: Drug Interactions with Metformin

“…The caspase-cascade system is entangled in the induction, transduction, and amplification of intracellular apoptotic signals. Caspase-3 is one of the executer caspases involved in apoptosis [64]. Caspase-3 immunostained sections obtained from the untreated diabetic group showed a significant increase in the cytoplasmic immunoreactivity when compared to the control group.…”

Bcl‑2 family: Novel insight into individualized therapy for ovarian cancer (Review)

“…It seems that these pathways are irrelevant; however, they can actually be linked through Bcl-2 family proteins. Research on the mechanisms of apoptosis in cells has shed light on the fact that the Bcl-2 family plays a central role in the apoptotic pathway ( 22 ) ( Fig. 1 ).…”

Niban protein regulates apoptosis in HK-2 cells via caspase-dependent pathway

“…Apoptosis as a process of regulating cell death, is mainly composed of complex intracellular signal networks. There are three different triggering pathways, including the exogenous (classical death receptor), endogenous (subdivided into mitochondria-and ER stress-induced types) and non-caspase-dependent pathways [27][28][29][30]. The Fas/FasL pathway is the most classical death receptor pathway and plays an important role in apoptosis [29,31].…”

“…Common ER stress inducers include TM [37][38][39]. Since caspase12 is involved in the ER stress pathway and is one of its molecular markers [17,30], we examined the marker protein cleaved-caspase 12 of the ER stress pathway. Our results showed that there was no change in the expression of cleaved-caspase 12 after AngII-induced injury.…”