On October 17th, 2014, the Annual Review of Pharmacology and Toxicology published an article online titled “Activation and Regulation of Caspase-6 and Its Role in Neurodegenerative Diseases”. The paper was written by Professor Su Xiaodong’s research team at the State Key Laboratory of Protein and Plant Gene Research, and the Biodynamic Optical Imaging Center at Peking University.
Caspase-6 is classified as an apoptotic effector, and it mediates nuclear shrinkage during apoptosis, but it possesses unique activation and regulation mechanisms that differ from those of other effector caspases. In the article, the current progress of international research on the role and structure of caspase-6 was summarized, and the findings of the team’s systematic study on the relationship between caspase-6 and neurodegenerative diseases over the past eight years were reported. The evidence relevant to the role of caspase-6 in neurodegenerative diseases was discussed and its activation and regulation mechanisms were summarized.
In doing so, they provided new insight into potential therapeutic approaches that incorporate the modulation of caspase-6 function for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.
The research was primarily carried out by Wang Xiaojun, Liu Xiang and Cao Qin, Ph.D. researchers who have graduated from PKU. Wang Xiaojun is the first author of the paper.
By Liu Zhaozhen
