Apoptosis, or cell death program, can be activated by various mechanisms within the extrinsic and the intrinsic pathway. While activation of cell death receptors leads to the engagement of the extrinsic pathway, the intrinsic pathway is activated by mitochondria during cellular stress, both
resulting in an activation of caspases.
In the present pathway we emphasized the activation of caspases by those two pathways in pancreatic cancer (PDAC) cells. Please notice, that PDAC cells are so called type-II cells. In these cells the activation of cell death receptors is not sufficient to activated caspases. By cleavage of Bid, type-II cells activate the intrinsic pathway as "amplification loop".