Effects of retinoblastoma family members on neuronal apoptosis

Sustained experimental evidence links the activation of cell cycle-regulating factors to neuronal apoptosis accompanying neurodegenerative diseases. Especially, induction of cyclin D1 and cyclin-dependent kinase (cdk) 4 have been shown to elicit key steps for apoptosis induced by ischemia in rodent brain and rabbit spinal cord (Katchanov and Harms et al., 2001). Moreover, in brains from patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) expression of cell cycle proteins predicts the sites of neuronal cell death (Nagy et al., 1998, 2000; Vincent et al. 1998; Raina et al., 2000; Lüth et al., 2000, Arendt, 2001). The role of t…