摘要：

Experimental and clinical data provide strong evidences of the involvement of appropriate apoptosis in several human diseases. Considerable progress has been made recently in the identification of the key biochemical players that contribute to the highly ordered and evolutionarily conserved process of programmed cell death. Apoptosis, which is induced or controlled by many different signaling pathways, ultimately converges to a single "final common pathway", namely the activation of the cell death machinery, involving members of the emerging family of cysteine proteases related to mammalian interleukin-1 converting enzyme (ICE). Once activated, these proteases will initiate the irreversible stages of the apoptotic process. ICE-like cysteine proteases cleave their target substrates after a unique recognition site containing an aspartic acid, and have been therefore designed caspases. Biochemical characterization of these cysteine proteases, of their function and activation pathways, and the recent characterisation of natural or synthetic inhibitors an avenue for a future scientific and therapeutic challenge: the control of human diseases where inappropriate or uncontrolled apoptosis is a prominent physiopathological feature.

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