摘要：

• Cell death is important in medicine• Why do we not have a medicine based on apoptosis?• The machinery of cell death• Cells have many options other than apoptosis• The response of a cell depends heavily on its history, lineage, and current status• Proteins now assumed to be cell death proteins may in fact have “day jobs” or multiple functions not appreciated by the researcher or physician• Some promise for the future?AbstractCell death is clearly an important factor in development, homeostasis, pathology and in aging, but medical efforts based on controlling cell death have not become major aspects of medicine. There are several reasons why hopes have been slow to be fulfilled, and they present indications for new directions in research. Most effort has focused on the machinery of cell death, or the proximate effectors of apoptosis and their closely associated and interacting proteins. But cells have man

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