Mitotic Catastrophe – Role in Programming of Cell Death

The incidence of cancer worldwide is on a rise, accounting it to be the second most common disease, first being the coronary heart disease [1]. The losses of cellular regulation that gives rise to most or all cases of cancer are due to genetic damage. Mutations, in two broad classes of genes – proto-oncogenes (eg, ras) and tumor suppressor genes (eg, APC) – play key roles in cancer induction. These genes encode many kinds of proteins that help control cell growth and proliferation. All human tumors have inactivating mutations in genes that normally act at various cell-cycle checkpoints to stop a cell's progress through the cell cycle if a previous step has occurred incorrectly or if DNA has been damaged [2].