Access

News and Views

Nature Medicine 6, 498 - 500 (2000)
doi:10.1038/74966

Caspase 8: The killer you can't live without

Philippe Juin1 & Gerard Evan1

  1. UCSF Cancer Center, 2340 Sutter Street , San Francisco, California 94143-0128, USA
    e-mail: GEvan@cc.ucsf.edu

The proto-oncogene MYCN, a regulator of cell proliferation and cell death, is amplified in aggressive neuroblastomas, whereas expression of the apoptotic effector caspase 8 is suppressed. Understanding why this nervous system tumor should choose to up or down regulate these particular apoptotic factors may provide important information about oncogenesis and indicate new strategies for the treatment of neuroblastoma ( pages 529–535).

The coupling of cell proliferation and cell suicide is thought to be an important cellular mechanism for the prevention of oncogenesis1, and it is believed that growth-deregulating mutations can lead to neoplasia only when apoptosis has been suppressed. It is therefore of great clinical importance to determine how apoptosis becomes suppressed in cancer, as repair of a cancer cell's defective apoptotic machinery offers the promise of effective and specific anti-cancer therapy.