Rheumatoid Arthritis News

Aberrant apoptosis (programmed cell death: the orderly disposal of non-essential cells) is thought to play an important role in autoimmune disease. In RA, resident synovial macrophages and fibroblast-like synovial lining cells are known to be relatively resistant to apoptosis, a process that may contribute to the initiation and propagation of RA. Survivin, an apoptosis-inhibiting protein that is expressed abundantly in most human cancers but not in most normal human adult tissues, has been well described in the oncology literature for its contribution to carcinogenesis.