Cancer’s Achilles’ Heel: Apoptosis and Necroptosis to the Rescue

Apoptosis, and the more recently discovered necroptosis, are two avenues of programmed cell death. Cancer cells survive by evading these two programs, driven by oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes. While traditional therapy using small molecular inhibitors and chemotherapy are continuously being utilized, a new and exciting approach is actively underway by identifying and using synergistic relationship between driver and rescue genes in a cancer cell. Through these synthetic lethal relationships, we are gaining tremendous insights into tumor vulnerabilities and specific molecular avenues for induction of programmed cell death. In this review, we briefly discuss the two cell death processes and cite examples of such synergistic manipulations for therapeutic purposes.