Molecular Mechanisms in Cell-Mediated Cytotoxicity

terleukin-1b converting enzyme (ICE) family, now called Department of Biomedical Science the caspase family (Alnemri et al., 1996), is believed to and Biotechnologies be required for cell death, at least as to its nuclear University of Brescia manifestations. GraB can cleave and thus activate cas25100 Brescia pases, leading tocell death. This pathway was examined and Institute of Histology by C. Bleackley and colleagues, who showed GraB– University of Genoa induced caspase 3 activation and its further processing 16132 Genoa in target cells (Darmon et al., 1995). However, the possiItaly bility that this occurs via an upstream caspase was sug-