Apoptosis modulation and signaling

Apoptosis, or cell death program, can be activated by various mechanisms within the extrinsic and the intrinsic pathway. While activation of cell death receptors leads to the engagement of the extrinsic pathway, the intrinsic pathway is activated by mitochondria during cellular stress, both resulting in an activation of caspases. In the present pathway we emphasized the activation of caspases by those two pathways in pancreatic cancer (PDAC) cells. Please notice, that PDAC cells are so called type-II cells. In these cells the activation of cell death receptors is not sufficient to activated caspases. By cleavage of Bid, type-II cells activate the intrinsic pathway as "amplification loop".

细胞凋亡，亦称细胞死亡程序，可通过外源性和内源性途径中的多种机制被激活。细胞死亡受体的激活导致外源性途径的参与，而内源性途径则在细胞应激状态下由线粒体激活，二者均导致caspases的激活。在本研究中，我们着重强调了这两条途径在胰腺癌细胞（PDAC）中激活caspases的过程。请注意，PDAC细胞被称为II型细胞。在这些细胞中，细胞死亡受体的激活不足以激活caspases。通过Bid的切割，II型细胞激活内源性途径，形成所谓的‘放大回路’。