From nature to bedside: Pro-survival and cell death mechanisms as therapeutic targets in cancer treatment

Nature, presenting an almost endless plenitude of bioactive scaffolds, can efficiently contribute compounds that allow deciphering the intricate pathways of cell death pathways and thus eventually contribute to selectively target cancer-type specific pathways in an attempt to personalize cancer patient treatment depending on cancer death pathway specificities. The aim of this review is to provide first an overview of molecular cell death specificities and to highlight how compounds of natural origins, with or without hemisynthetic modifications, target unique thanatotic molecular constellations.