Mechanisms of apoptosis in central nervous system tumors: application to theory.

Apoptosis is a key concept for the successful therapy of brain tumors. This review focuses on the mechanisms of apoptosis occurring spontaneously in malignant gliomas, discusses the different methods employed to assess apoptosis in vivo and in vitro, and considers the value of quantifying apoptosis in surgical biopsies for diagnosis and prognosis. Further, novel strategies to induce apoptosis in human malignant glioma cells are reviewed, including experimental therapy with death ligands, methods for sensitizing glioma cells to the induction of apoptosis, p53 gene transfer, and approaches to target the expression of therapeutic genes selectively to tumor cells.