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Apoptosis and cancer: When BAX is TRAILing away

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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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