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**Chapter 7** 

© 2012 Volkova and Poltorak, licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2012 Volkova and Poltorak, licensee InTech. This is a paper distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

**Cellular Caspases: New Targets** 

Tatyana O. Volkova and Alexander N. Poltorak

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

inflammatory process induced thereby [1, 2].

susceptibility to leukocyte lysis [2, 6].

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/51011

**1. Introduction** 

**for the Action of Pharmacological Agents** 

The number of scientific papers devoted to the study of caspases has lately being constantly growing. Caspases are a family of cysteine-dependent aspartate specific proteases. Caspases play an essential role in the apoptosis, necrosis and inflammation processes. Apoptosis is asynchronous programmed cell death, which helps maintain the physiological balance and genetic stability of the organism through self-destruction of genetically modified defect cells. Apoptosis may happen also in normal cells, e.g., during embryogenesis. During apoptosis, activated endogenous nucleases cleave DNA into fragments, but cell membranes and the intracellular matter remain intact, nor is there tissue damage or leukocytic infiltration. In contrast to apoptosis, necrosis is a pathological form of cell death caused by acute damage, rupture of the membrane, release of the cytoplasm content, and the

As of now, at lease 14 caspases have been described from mammals: 8 caspases are involved in apoptosis, 5 activate anti-inflammatory cytokines, and one acts in keratinocyte differentiation. This division is, however, rather arbitrary – we know from a number of papers that some apoptotic caspases may, depending on the conditions, participate in other cell life processes, such as proliferation [3], differentiation [4, 5], modification of

During apoptosis, different caspases perform different functions. Depending on the phase at which those proteins enter the apoptotic cascade one distinguishes initiator (apical) and effector (executioner) caspases. E.g., caspase-2, -8, -9, -10, and -12 are initiator ones; caspase-3, -6, -7 – effector ones. All caspases are originally inactive, but activated when needed by cleavage of a small fragment by initiator caspases. Initiator caspase activation is more sophisticated – by special protein complexes: apoptosomes, PIDDosomes, DISC (*death-*
