Apoptosis Pathways and Neuroblastoma Therapy

Evasion of apoptosis, the cell's intrinsic death program, is a hallmark of human cancers including neuroblastoma. Also, failure to undergo apoptosis may cause treatment resistance, since the cytotoxic activity of anticancer therapies commonly used in the clinic, e. g. chemotherapy, gamma-irradiation or immunotherapy, is predominantly mediated by triggering apoptosis in tumor cells. Therefore, a better understanding of the signaling pathways and molecules that govern apoptosis in neuroblastoma cells is expected to open new avenues for the design of molecular targeted therapies for neuroblastoma.