BCL2: a 30-year tale of life, death and much more to come

The past three decades of research on BCL2, the founding member of a family of apoptotic proteins and archetype of cell death inhibitors, have been tremendously insightful, culminating in the recent successful clinical translation of new therapeutic approaches exploiting cell death pathways (Figure 1). However, to maximize the chances of providing long-term therapeutic benefit to patients with cancer and other diseases, there is still an urgent need to gain a thorough understanding of the mechanisms underlying cell death. This issue of Cell Death & Differentiation brings together a set of reviews focused on the crucial role of BCL2 and its protein family in the regulation of apoptosis, with emphasis on unresolved issues, likely to have a profound impact on our understanding of this biological process