Apoptosis: prospects for pharmacological manipulation of activated programmed cell death in immunological disease.

Apoptosis of lymphoid cells is an important process in regulating the development and maintenance of the immune system. In addition, apoptosis can be considered as the primary cause of a variety of diseases. The decision of a cell to undergo apoptosis or to proliferate can be influenced by several activating stimuli, as well as by the phenotype of the cell and its stage of activation. Consequently, apoptosis represents one feature of the multiple events that regulate a correct immune response. Here, we discuss the regulatory pathways responsible for the induction of apoptosis in normal and pathological conditions, and analyse the possible substances interfering with these pathways with particular attention to the levels at which these substances act.