Investigators at Saint Jude Children’s Research Hospital have announced new research which has advanced the understanding of how cells undergo Apoptosis. Apoptosis is intentional programmed cell death and is believed to be one of the main reasons for the existence of cancer which hijacks apoptosis and prevents it from occurring. A report on this work can be found in the advanced online publication in Nature.

James Ihle, Ph.D., and senior author describes the work, “This is probably the first description of what is happening mechanistically that contributes to the ability of cells to delay apoptosis,(…)it provides incredible insights into how three proteins work and how they can control apoptosis.” The researchers demonstrated in mouse lymphocytes that a protein, Hax1, is required to suppress apoptosis. Briefly, Hax1 interacts with the protease Parl which allows HtrA2 to be presented to Parl. Ultimately the presence of HtrA2 prevents Bax to become activated, and Bax is known as one way to initiate apoptosis.

This detailed look at the mechanisms behind apoptosis are extremely beneficial to further preventing cancer. Similar to pharmaceutical companies targeting Angiogenesis, Apoptosis drugs is believed to be another way to slow down or even prevent many forms of cancer. By figuring out ways to initiate apoptosis in cancer you effectively rid cancer, remember cancer is define as uncontrolled cell growth due to the lack of cells undergoing apoptosis. With this type of research the drug industry will be screening and targeting proteins found in this paper and hopefully have similar success stories such as Avastin from Genetech.