Current Pharmaceutical Design - Volume 14, Issue 3, 2008

Cell death is a basic element occurring not only in the normal organism functioning but also in many forms of aging and pathologies. The reviews here collected focus on the important role that the different types of cell death, or the interplay among them, can play in many forms of aging and pathologies discussing also how cell death may be exploited for therapeutic purposes in human diseases. McLean et al. focus on the mo Read More

Elucidation of the mechanisms behind cell death has brought with it an appreciation for viral strategies that target these pathways as a means to promote viral propagation while avoiding or slowing the host immune response. Several redundant anti-viral pathways have evolved in eukaryotic cells that are designed to minimize the damage due to viral infection while quickly clearing the invading pathogen. Cell death is a comm Read More

Endothelial cell senescence and apoptosis are features of numerous human pathologies including atherosclerosis, allograft vasculopathy, heart failure, diabetic retinopathy and scleroderma. In contrast, endothelial cell activation and replication associated with vessel proliferation and angiogenesis are now therapeutic targets in other diseases such as cancer and macular dystrophy. Finally, preventive medicine, in partic Read More

Cell death is as important as cell proliferation for cell turn-over, and susceptibility to cell death is affected by a number of parameters that change with time. A time-dependent derangement of such a crucial process, or even the simple cell loss mediated by cell death impinges upon aging and longevity. In this review we will discuss how cell death phenomena are modulated during aging and what is their possible role in the agin Read More

During the evolution, the immune system has developed several strategies to fight viral infections. Apoptosis, autophagy and necrosis are different types of cell death that play a main role in the interactions between infective agents and the host, since they are often important defence mechanisms that have to avoid the spreading of the infection. In turn, viruses have evolved numerous ways to evade the host immune s Read More

The term self-cannibalism, or autophagy, was coined to describe the ability of the cells to cannibalize their own damaged organelles or proteins. It was morphologically described as the presence of double-membraned autophagic vesicles filled with diverse cellular materials or debris inside the cells. Hence, more recently, the presence of autophagic vacuoles has been associated with cell survival, including cell senescence and c Read More

The immune system has evolved sophisticate mechanisms controlling the development of responses to dangerous antigens while avoiding unnecessary attacks to innocuous, commensal or self antigens. The risk of autoimmunity is continuously checked and balanced against the risk of succumbing to exogenous infectious agents. It is therefore of paramount importance to understand the molecular events linking the bre Read More

Inflammation is a key homeostatic process elicited by microbial components and by tissue damage. Increasing evidence indicates that the outcomes either tissue repair or persistent inflammatory damage and degeneration tightly depend on the pattern of cell death in situ and on infiltrating leukocytes and antigen presenting cells. Defects in the initiation and execution steps of programmed cell death such as in the Read More

“Tissue” or type 2 Transglutaminase (TG2) is a peculiar multifunctional enzyme able to catalyse Ca2+-dependent posttranslational modification of proteins, by establishing covalent bonds between peptide-bound glutamine residues and either lysine residues or mono- and poly-amines. In addition, it may act also as a G protein in transmembrane signalling, as a kinase, as a protein disulphide isomerase and as a cell surface Read More

Although a high number of allergenic peptide epitopes has been experimentally identified and defined, the molecular basis and the precise mechanisms underlying peptide allergenicity are unknown. This issue was analyzed exploring the relationship between peptide allergenicity and sequence similarity to the human proteome. The structured analysis of the data reported in literature put into evidence that the most p Read More

The integrin family of cell surface receptors were principally thought to be involved in cell adhesion. Intense study has shown that these glycoproteins also regulate a diverse range of physiological processes. Inappropriate activation of integrins has been implicated in many pathological processes. Recent studies have shown that these molecules play a key role in the early stages of liver metastasis in colorect Read More