Question

My question: Explain the relationship between apoptosis and many forms of cancer. What are the prospects of using programmed cell death pathways as a targeted cancer treatment?

My answer: Apoptosis is when it clears the body of cells that are set to have a limited life span and that are unneeded or dysfunctional. An example of this is when a woman is on her menstrual cycle; the cells lining the uterus are expelled from the body each month (Marieb and Hoehn). Cancer cells are able to elude apoptosis. These cells also show many characteristics that would start apoptosis in healthy cells, and because of this, the cancer cells are able to survive. For a targeted cancer treatment, a prospect would be to target the infected cells that suppress the cell death. The cancer cells depend on the characteristics noted above in order to grow, therefore should target those cells.

Is this correct and does this make any sense?

Answer 1

It's somewhat correct but I will give you a better answer, so you can make necessary changes.

Apoptosis or programed cell death is the genetically regulated pathway of cell death. It's function is to remove unwanted, harmful cells example if during cell division there is any mutation, chromosomal non disjunction (which may be caused by external or internal factors) then cell will try to repair these damages and if unsuccessful then cell activate apoptotic pathway and cell dies.

The apoptotic pathway is genetically regulated. There are 2 types of gene that regulate apoptosis -

• Pro apoptotic gene - Bax, Bad, Bid
• Anti apoptotic gene - Bcl 2, Bcl x

If there is imbalance between these 2 factors (either increase Anti-apoptotic or decreased Pro-apoptotic genes) then it will lead to increased cell survival and division which will lead to development of cancer.

Therefore use of targeted apoptosis pathway will greatly aid the treatment of cancer. Therapy that will restore this balance (or increase apoptosis) in these cancer cell will induce apoptosis and thus will reduce tumor burden and prevent it's progression.

EXAMPLE - p53 pathway

p53 is Tumor suppressor gene that regulate cell cycle. It stops cell cycle if it detects any defect example if DNA is damaged. It then activate pathways to repair these defect. If unsuccessful then it lead to activation of the Apoptosis. So if there is mutation of p53 then this repair and apoptosis will not occur and cell will divide and lead to cancer.