Cancer cell killing via ROS: To increase or decrease, that is the question

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) act as a second messenger in cell signaling and are essential for various biological processes in normal cells. Any aberrance in redox balance may relate to human pathogenesis including cancers. Since ROS are usually increased in cancer cells due to oncogene activation, relative lack of blood supply or other variances and ROS do involve in initiation, progression and metastasis of cancers, ROS are considered oncogenic. Ironically, ROS production is a mechanism shared by all non-surgical therapeutic approaches for cancers, including chemotherapy, radiotherapy and photodynamic therapy, due to their implication in triggering cell death, therefore ROS are also used to kill cancer…

• NN
  National Natural Science Foundation of China
• MO
  Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China