Our laboratory has focused for many years on cell death, a field that now boasts over 100,000 publications and is known also by the terms "apoptosis" and "programmed cell death". First recognized in development (where does the tail of a metamorphosing tadpole go?), cell death is now considered to be a major component of development, homeostasis, aging, and many diseases. Some examples are:
Most developmental abnormalities (teratologies) arise from excessive or insufficient cell death.
In the developing central nervous system, as many as half of the newly-born cells die, with this death being essential for proper neural development.
Many forms of cancer are failures of cells to die at the right time.
At least half of the cells that die in a heart attack could be salvaged if we knew how to control cell death.
A major approach in treating AIDS is to limit the death of the T-cells (most of which are not infected with virus but rather are induced to commit suicide), and
Alzheimer's Disease is inherently a problem of cell death.
We have looked for many years at signaling mechanisms inducing cells to die as well as the proteases that take the cells apart and may be the killing mechanism. Currently we focus on two major directions: Proteases other than caspases (proteases with very restricted substrate specificity that are the major proteases in apoptosis) and the acquisition by an embryo of the ability to undergo apoptosis. These studies have taken us, including many students, to many countries including (2000-2002) Canada, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Israel, Austria, and Australia.