Mammalian cells adopt several cellular mechanisms to die, including apoptosis, autophagy, and programmed necrosis. After decades of classic cell biology and genetics studies, the molecular components of cell death machinery begin to emerge. Cell death has an important homeostatic role, mediating the removal of damaged cells, organelles, and proteins. Accumulated studies have increasingly shown that cell death plays critical roles in a variety of human disease including cancers, infection, and cardiovascular dysfunction. Novel cell death based drug targets and predictive biomarkers have been evaluated in several clinical trials.

The main focus of this special issue will be on the advances in our understanding of cell death pathways and the translation of laboratory discovery into clinical practice. This special issue will provide a platform to summarize the most recent development and ideas in the field and enhance more effective collaboration among basic researchers and clinicians. We invite authors to submit original research articles as well as review articles on the following topics. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Cell death and cancer
• Cell death in infection, immunity, and inflammatory diseases
• Cell death in hypertension, ischemia, and other cardiovascular diseases
• Cell death-related biomarkers discovery
• Novel drug targets in cell death pathway
• Cell death and noncoding RNAs
• Regulation of cell death

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/submit/journals/bmri/pathology/cdh/ according to the following timetable: