Cell death as part of innate immunity: Cause or consequence?

Regulated or programmed cell death plays a critical role in the development and tissue organization and function. In addition, it is intrinsically connected with immunity and host defence. An increasing cellular and molecular findings cause a change in the concept of cell death, revealing an expanding network of regulated cell death modalities and their biochemical programmes. Likewise, recent evidences demonstrate the interconnection between cell death pathways and how they are involved in different immune mechanisms. This work provides an overview of the main cell death programmes and their implication in innate immunity not only as an immunogenic/inflammatory process, but also as an active defence strategy during immune response and at the same time as a regulatory mechanism.