Multiple ways to die: Non-apoptotic forms of cell death

Abstract

Although cell death research has progressed rapidly over the two decades with emphasis on the study of apoptosis, non-apoptotic forms of cell death have recently attracted more attention. In the present short review, I will describe how this transition is occurring and emphasize the importance of investigating non-apoptotic forms of cell death as well as apoptosis to fully understand the spectrum of death in eukaryotic cells. The aim is not to list all published forms of cell death, but to indicate the necessity for a conceptual paradigm shift, so I will only introduce a limited number of cell death mechanisms.

Acknowledgments

The studies from my laboratory cited in this article was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Creative Scientific Research (number 19GS0316 to YT) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and a grant for Global Center of Excellence (COE) Program Research from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. This article was an Acta Oncologica Lecture, from the 19th ECDO annual conference with the topic “Metabolism, Epigenetics and Cell Death” on 14th–17th of September, 2011 at Norra Latin, Stockholm.

Declaration of interest: The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of the paper.