The Network on the Mechanisms and Biomedical Implications of Cell Death or simply the ‘Cell Death Network’ (www.celldeathnetwork.com) was proud to organize its second symposium, on 24 April 24 2009, in the prestigious Nobel Forum lecture hall at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm. Cell death is a broad notion, a process involved in a wide variety of cellular states. Cell death, in the form of apoptosis, necrosis or autophagy, is involved not only in the normal process of tissue renewal and development, but also in diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and immunological and neurodegenerative diseases. Thus, the aim of this meeting was to bring together researchers from different fields to discuss different angles of cell death. Local and international invited speakers covered cell death related topics within immunology, endocrinology, oncology as well as molecular signaling.

In his introductory remarks, Sten Orrenius acknowledged that, since the first Cell Death Network mini-symposium was organized at Nobel Forum 1 year ago, research activity in the cell death field continues to be very high and that considerable knowledge of the mechanisms involved has been gained. However, important gaps in our understanding of key events in the pathways triggering cell death still remain. For example, although we all agree that the cytosolic Bcl-2 family member, Bax, is critically involved in mitochondrial outer membrane permeabilization and in the release of cytochrome c and other proapoptotic proteins from the intermembrane space, the detailed mechanisms leading to Bax activation, translocation to the mitochondria and insertion into the outer membrane are still unclear. Also, the question of presence of mitochondrial receptor(s) for activated Bax has not been answered yet, although some recent work has suggested that member(s) of the TOM (translocase of the outer mitochondrial membrane) complex are involved in targeting activated Bax to the mitochondria. However, this is still controversial, and may serve as one example of key events in cell death signaling that have still not been resolved. Hence, it is clear that further research is required to characterize the cell death signaling pathways in detail as well as their biomedical implications.

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