Farber E
Department of Pathology, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Mod Pathol. 1994 Jun;7(5):605-9.
Cell death remains poorly understood, despite its obvious importance in every organ and tissue in a wide variety of biological processes, including, of course, the many pathological. The past few years have seen an amazing expansion of interest in cell death in normal development and maturation, in the pathogenesis of many acute and chronic diseases, and in the therapy of some diseases, especially malignant neoplastic diseases and some hyperplastic diseases such as psoriasis. This expansion has included an unusual interest in a supposedly new form of cell death, a "programmed cell death," designated "apoptosis." This is proposed as a hitherto undescribed form of cell death in contrast to the classical cell death, necrosis. Apoptosis is considered by some, especially by nonpathologists, to represent quite a different type of cell death. A review of the literature on on apoptosis, programmed cell death, necrosis, etc. indicates that there is no field of basic cell biology and cell pathology that is more confusing and more unintelligible than the area of apoptosis versus necrosis. If any degree of clarity is to develop in our understanding of the fundamental principles underlying cell death of any type, it is incumbent upon us to rethink "from square one" the scientific analysis of how cells die and how can we assess cell death in a reasonably rational manner.
尽管细胞死亡在包括众多病理过程在内的各种生物过程中的每个器官和组织中都具有明显的重要性，但人们对其仍知之甚少。在过去几年中，人们对细胞死亡在正常发育和成熟、许多急慢性疾病的发病机制以及某些疾病（特别是恶性肿瘤疾病和一些增生性疾病如牛皮癣）的治疗方面的兴趣惊人地扩大。这种扩大包括对一种所谓的新的细胞死亡形式，即“程序性细胞死亡”（称为“凋亡”）的异常关注。与经典的细胞死亡——坏死相反，凋亡被认为是一种迄今为止未被描述的细胞死亡形式。一些人，尤其是非病理学家，认为凋亡代表了一种截然不同的细胞死亡类型。对有关凋亡、程序性细胞死亡、坏死等的文献进行回顾表明，在基础细胞生物学和细胞病理学领域，没有哪个领域比凋亡与坏死的领域更令人困惑和难以理解。如果我们要在理解任何类型细胞死亡的基本原理方面获得任何程度的清晰认识，我们有责任“从头开始”重新思考对细胞如何死亡以及我们如何以合理理性的方式评估细胞死亡的科学分析。
