“…Previous studies have reported that VacA is capable of causing death of AGS gastric epithelial cells and several other cell lines (5,7,16,39,44). On the basis of the observations that VacA-induced cell death is preceded by the activation of Bax and Bak (75), that VacA can localize to mitochondria (7,21,27,30,70), and that incubation of cells with VacA results in reduction of the mitochondrial transmembrane potential and release of cytochrome c (30,39,70), VacA-induced cell death of these cell lines was classified as an apoptotic process (5,16,44,54,71).…”