Reed J C
The Burnham Institute, La Jolla, California 92037, USA.
Oncogene. 1998 Dec 24;17(25):3225-36. doi: 10.1038/sj.onc.1202591.
Bcl-2 family proteins serve as critical regulators of pathways involved in apoptosis, acting to either inhibit or promote cell death. Altered expression of these proteins occurs commonly in human cancers, contributing to neoplastic cell expansion by suppressing programmed cell death and extending tumor cell life span. Moreover, because chemotherapeutic drugs typically exert their cytotoxic actions by inducing apoptosis, the ultimate efficacy of most anticancer drugs can be heavily influenced by the relative levels and state of activation of members of the Bcl-2 family. The question of how Bcl-2 family proteins function remains debatable, but new findings are shaping our impressions of these multi-functional proteins and revealing the details of how these proteins participate in the regulation of cell life and death.
Bcl-2家族蛋白是细胞凋亡相关信号通路的关键调节因子，具有抑制或促进细胞死亡的作用。这些蛋白的表达改变在人类癌症中普遍存在，通过抑制程序性细胞死亡和延长肿瘤细胞寿命，促进肿瘤细胞增殖。此外，由于化疗药物通常通过诱导细胞凋亡发挥细胞毒性作用，大多数抗癌药物的最终疗效会受到Bcl-2家族成员相对水平和激活状态的严重影响。Bcl-2家族蛋白如何发挥作用的问题仍存在争议，但新的研究结果正在改变我们对这些多功能蛋白的认识，并揭示这些蛋白参与细胞生死调控的具体细节。
