Fol. Biol. 2006, 52, 119-136
Cell Death Signalling Pathways in the Pathogenesis and Therapy of Haematologic Malignancies: Overview of Therapeutic Approaches
Malignant diseases, including haematologic malignancies, are associated with defects in the cell death mechanism. These defects are not only important for the growth advantage of the malignant clone, but when understood can be used for specific therapeutic targeting of malignant cells while sparing normal cells. The promising groups of agents that trigger, directly or indirectly, apoptosis of haematologic cancer cells are reviewed in this article. Some of the agents have recently been approved for therapy, some are under the clinical evaluation in various phases of clinical trials and some are tested under the experimental laboratory conditions.
Keywords
leukaemia, lymphoma, TNF-related apoptosis inducing ligand, Bcl-2 protein family, inhibitor of apoptosis proteins (IAPs), heat-shock proteins (HSPs), heat-shock protein inhibitors (HSPI), JAK, STAT, Bcr-Abl, receptor tyrosine kinase, mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK), phosphatidylinositol 3 kinase (PI3K), Akt/protein kinase B, mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), NFκB, cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs), cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors (CDKI), histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACI), iron chelators.
Funding
Grant Agency of Charles University GAUK 50/04/c, Internal Grant Agency of the Ministry of Health NR8317-4, and MSM 00211620806.
References
Copyright
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.