Yessotoxin as an apoptotic inducer

This work summarises current knowledge on how the marine toxin yessotoxin (YTX) induces apoptosis in different types of cells. The work also addresses perspectives for future research on this topic. YTX triggers apoptosis in a variety of cellular systems including cancer cells. The actual apoptotic pathways are not fully understood and seem to be cell-specific. YTX can induce the mitochondrial pathway in myoblast cell lines, but its potential to activate other signalling pathways and possible cross-talk between them has not been reported. Improvement in our understanding of death signalling induction by YTX may contribute to identifying novel molecular mechanisms of interest for therapeutic applications. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.