Is it a new term? No., it is a normal situation which will happen on most of cell. Mostly, they call this cell action as “Apoptosis”. Other just called these phenomena as programmed cell death.
source : http://www.scq.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2006/07/Apoptosis.gif
What the special case on this apoptosis? The main one is they do not cause any harm effect for the other systems and cells. So there will be no toxic effect and some content of the cell can be used for other cell regeneration.
Toxic effect..?,
for example is cell death on infection will cause some inflammatory reaction, you will feel sick, because cell will release chemistry content which will induce this inflammatory reaction. This will not happened in apoptosis. The cell will shrink and the component of the cell will degenerate.
Is it hard to imagine?
... No.., the simple example of apoptosis is de-squamosa of our skin cell. You feel nothing, don’t you?. There is no pain, no reaction, although the old cell skins are death and become “the dirt” on your body surface.
Induced cell death?...,
For example is the pus on inflammatory reaction. It will cause pain, fever and other reaction in our body. Another example is the effect of chemotherapy on cancer patient. They feel very uncomfortable even sick and pain.
Recently, researchers got more and more interested in these phenomena, as apoptosis is happened not only in a normal cell but also in “potential cancer cell”.
source : http://www.lifesci.dundee.ac.uk
This process might be the answer of “magically disappeared cancer” in some cases. Unfortunately, there is still not direct answer for the main factors of these processes. Researches have been trying to get the hypotheses on so many cascades or pathways in the cells which might contribute for these processes.
Hmm…, nature has their own way to keep their secret. However, this can be a miracle, if the dominant factor was founded…you can imagine, how happy the cancer patient should be.
Cancer cell could be “motivated” to do cell suicide. A cancer cell will be a dead cell without giving any harm effect to the patient.
What a milestone it could be..!!!
Still a lot of homework to do…
