Pathways of apoptotic and non-apoptotic death in tumour cells

Defects in cell-death pathways are hallmarks of cancer. Although resistance to apoptosis is closely linked to tumorigenesis, tumour cells can still be induced to die by non-apoptotic mechanisms, such as necrosis, senescence, autophagy and mitotic catastrophe. The molecular pathways that underlie these non-apoptotic responses remain unclear. Several apoptotic and non-apoptotic pathways of cell death have been defined in normal physiology and during tumorigenesis, and these could potentially be manipulated to develop new cancer therapies. The mitotic-checkpoint molecule survivin - the inactivation of which induces the death of p53-deficient cells by mitotic catastrophe - is of particular interest.