Programmed cell death is an integral component of C. elegans development. Genetic studies in C. elegans have led to the identification of more than two dozen genes that are important for the specification of which cells should live or die, the activation of the suicide program, and the dismantling and removal of dying cells. Molecular and biochemical studies have revealed the underlying conserv...

Apoptosis is a highly organized physiologic mechanism of destroying injured and abnormal cells as well as maintaining homeostasis in the multicellular organism. Apoptosis is tightly controlled at the genetic level and dysregulation of the apoptosis machinery may contribute to a variety of diseases. Pharmacologic manipulation of this pathway is a novel therapeutic target.

Erythrocytes are produced by a complex and finely regulated process of erythropoiesis. It starts with a pluripotential stem cell that, in addition of its self replication capacity, can give rise to separate cell lineages. Erythropoiesis passes from the stem cell through the multipotent progenitor CFU-GEMM (colony-forming unit granulocyte erythroid monocyte and megakaryocyte), and then BFU-E (bu...

Therapeutic strategies targeting the programmed cell death-ligand 1/programmed cell death-1 pathway have shown significant responses and good tolerability in solid malignancies. Although preclinical studies suggest that inhibiting programmed cell death-ligand 1/programmed cell death-1 interactions might also be highly effective in hematological malignancies, remarkably few clinical trials have ...

During programmed cell death (PCD) apoptosis is controlled by many factors such as proteases. With no specific protease (s) known during PCD in the developing nervous system so far, we sought to determine if any specific protease (s) is involved in this process and therefore used different protease inhibitors during PCD (from embryonic day 6 to 10) in chick embryos. Among the inhibitors commerc...

Reduced levels of human myeloid nuclear differentiation antigen (MNDA) gene transcripts have been detected in both familial and sporadic cases of myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). Numerous reports implicate elevated apoptosis/programmed cell death and death ligands and their receptors in the pathogenesis of MDS. MNDA and related proteins contain the pyrin domain that functions in signaling assoc...

The role of mitochondria in Drosophila programmed cell death remains unclear, although certain gene products that regulate cell death seem to be evolutionarily conserved. We find that developmental programmed cell death stimuli in vivo and multiple apoptotic stimuli ex vivo induce dramatic mitochondrial fragmentation upstream of effector caspase activation, phosphatidylserine exposure, and nucl...