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Apoptosis and cancer: When BAX is TRAILing away

The development of anticancer therapies that target apoptosis pathways may be hampered by resistance of certain tumor cells to death signals. New findings show that tumor cells lacking the pro-apoptotic protein Bax are resistant to apoptosis induced by the death ligand TRAIL, but that chemotherapeutic drugs can restore their sensitivity to TRAIL. (pages 274–281)

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Figure 1: Pathways for caspase activation and apoptosis.

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Roth, W., Reed, J. Apoptosis and cancer: When BAX is TRAILing away. Nat Med 8, 216–218 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0302-216

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