Induction of Pyroptosis: A Promising Strategy for Cancer Treatment

Abstract

Pyroptosis, a lytic pro-inflammatory type of programmed cell death, has been widely studied in diverse inflammatory disease models. Membrane perforation and cell swelling induced by cleaved gasdermin family members is the main characteristic of pyroptosis. Emerging evidence has revealed a complicated relationship between pyroptosis and cancer. On the one hand, as inflammatory cell death, pyroptosis provides a comfortable environment for tumor proliferation. On the other hand, excessive activation of pyroptosis can inhibit the development of tumor cells. In this review, we first summarized the latest progress about the molecular mechanism of pyroptosis. Then, members from gasdermin family, the central molecules of pyroptosis which formed pores on the cell membrane, were highlighted. In the second part of this review, we summarized drugs that induced pyroptosis in different tumors and their concrete mechanisms based on recent literature reports. In the final section, we discussed several hotspots in pyroptosis and cancer therapy, which will point out the direction of sequent research. In brief, inducing pyroptosis in cancer cells is a promising strategy for cancer therapy.

Establishment of a prognosis Prediction Model Based on Pyroptosis-Related Signatures Associated With the Immune Microenvironment and Molecular Heterogeneity in Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma

“…Recently, several studies found that the pyroptosis signal might play a dual role in tumor development and drug response (33). On one hand, long time exposure to inflammation could facilitate tumorigenesis; on the other hand, pyroptosis could inhibit the development of cancers.…”

Identification of the Pyroptosis-Related Gene Signature and Risk Score Model for Colon Adenocarcinoma

“…Pyroptosis is associated with many diseases ( Al Mamun et al, 2020 ; Al Mamun et al, 2021 ; Chu et al, 2016 ; Wang et al, 2018 ). Meanwhile, pyroptosis may mediate cell death by Caspase-1–dependent, Caspase-4/5/11–dependent, and Caspase-3/8–dependent inflammasome signaling pathways ( Antonopoulos et al, 2015 ; Yu et al, 2019 ; Chen et al, 2020 ; Liu et al, 2021 ; L.; Wang et al, 2021 ). Recently, increasing studies show that pyroptosis is associated with the development of cancer ( Al Mamun et al, 2021 ).…”

Failure of Immunotherapy—The Molecular and Immunological Origin of Immunotherapy Resistance in Lung Cancer

“…Therefore, a novel approach to immunotherapy schedule may be the depletion of TFR cells or blocking their activity with anti-CTLA-4 before anti-PD-1 therapy. The effectiveness of this approach has been proven in mouse tumor models and were also associated with better survival outcomes in a large cohort of patients with melanoma [21][22][23].…”

“…The chronic inflammation activation of pyroptosis facilitates the tumor progression, while it inhibits tumor growth during acute inflammation. However, the interaction between pyroptosis and antitumor immunity still needs further research [22,23,25].…”