Several genes that play a role in how our body's cells normally auto-destruct may play a role in age-related hearing loss, according to research published online in the journal Apoptosis – a journal devoted to the topic of cell suicide, or programmed cell death.

Molecular imaging agent reveals beneficial effects of tissue-protecting hormone, according to article in The Journal of Nuclear Medicine

Apoptosis is a programmed, active, highly selective mechanism of cell death. Abnormal regulation of apoptosis can lead to disorders such as cancer. The field of apoptosis research has undergone an explosion of new knowledge over the past decade.

Isoforms from Novel Structure Proteins (NSP), a new family of genes discovered by researchers in the Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine in Temple University's College of Science and Technology, could be involved in apoptosis or programmed cell death.

A team of medical researchers led by Dr Ruth Kluck at Melbourne’s Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) has discovered a key step in the mechanism by which cells destroy themselves. In this process, called “apoptosis”, certain proteins cause the cell to self-destruct by puncturing its “power plant.” How the proteins do this has been clarified by the WEHI team. The discovery is an important step towards the identification of targets for drugs designed to regulate cell death.

Investigators at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have discovered a dance of proteins that protects certain cells from undergoing apoptosis, also known as programmed cell death. Understanding the fine points of apoptosis is important to researchers seeking ways to control this process.

A new compound that blocks an early step in cell death could lead to a novel class of drugs for treating heart attacks and stroke.

Neurotransmitters have consequences. They initiate events that are critical to a healthy life, giving us the ability to move, to talk, to breathe, to think. But that’s if the neurotransmitters are getting it right and sending proper signals downstream to muscle cells, neurons or other cells.

Can a tiny winged insect’s salivary glands really tell us about processes relevant to human disease" Yes, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS), who gained new insights into autophagy—a cellular degradation process associated with a form of programmed cell death—by studying the salivary gland cells of the fruit fly.

Sometimes healthy cells commit suicide. In the 1970s, scientists showed that a type of programmed cell death called apoptosis plays a key role in development, and the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine recognized their work. As apoptotic cells degrade, they display standard characteristics, including irregular bulges in the membrane and nuclear fragmentation.

A new study led by investigators from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine demonstrates that the process of necrosis, long thought to be a chaotic, irreversible pathway to cell death, may actually be triggered as part of a regulated response to stress by a powerful protein, SRP-6, that can potentially halt necrosis in its path.

A remarkable change takes place in the brains of tiny songbirds every year, and some day the mechanism controlling that change may help researchers develop treatments for age-related degenerative diseases of the brain such as Parkinson’s and dementia.