Ted Agres | Jun 24, 2001 | 4 min read
Apoptosis, a key process in the development of embryonic tissue differentiation, later helps to regulate the normal cellular life cycle by destroying damaged cells. When something goes awry, too little apoptosis can make cancer cells resistant to chemotherapy and even death-defiant. At the other extreme, premature or excessive apoptosis has been linked to neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's, and to nerve cell loss in strokes. Not surprisingly, many major pharmaceutical companies rec