Live and Let Die – the implications of cell death for health and illness

One million cells in your body die every second. That means in one day, approximately 1.2 kg of cells die. But it's nothing to worry about. Quite the opposite; it would be a real problem if the cells in your body did not die. Cell death is a completely natural part of the body's recycling of cellular building blocks and it is actually a precondition for life.

Old and broken cells must be taken away. Parts of cells that have broken down, or were not right from the start, need to be removed. So cell death is a very important part of the body's quality and sanitation system that clears away the old and broken bits and replaces them with new ones.

Problems arise, however, when something goes wrong with the cell death process. In the case of cancer, cells refuse to die and grow into a tumour. In diseases such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, the opposite occurs: brain cells die even though they are not supposed to.

Today there are more than 50 diseases in which scientists know that the whole reason, or a major part of it, is related to a failure of balance in cell death. This has made research into different types of cell death the most prolific area of research in the world during the past decade.