Publisher Summary This chapter provides some underlying principles that are important in
studying the drug activity in model systems. The chapter highlights some of the problems …

Evolutionary dynamics relates the growth and development of tumours to changes in rates of
cell proliferation and cell death, and to their mutation rates. The cellular environment exerts …

Tumor progression involves the acquisition of properties which include growth‐factor
independent cell proliferation, failure of inhibition by growth‐inhibitory signals, ability to …

Current cancer therapies are highly toxic and often nonspecific. A potentially less toxic
approach to treating this prevalent disease employs agents that modify cancer cell …

Research over the last several decades has established that tumor formation is a clonal
multi-step process in which a single normal cell develops into a malignant transformed …

Cell death can be classified according to the morphological appearance of the lethal
process (that may be apoptotic, necrotic, autophagic or associated with mitosis) …

Tumor cells have evolved numerous mechanisms to thwart apoptosis. As our understanding
of the machinery which regulates cell‐death evolves, these apoptotic defects have fallen into …

Programmed cell death or apoptosis, in which cells actively participate in their own self-
destruction, is increasingly being recognised as a biological process of critical importance …

For every cell, there is a time to live and a time to die. It is apparent that cell life and death
decisions are taken by individual cells based on their interpretation of physiological or non …

Failure to eliminate cancer cells that have been exposed to cytotoxic agents may contribute
to the development of resistance to antitumor drugs. A widespread model in present day …