In Alzheimer's, brain cells die too soon. In cancer, dangerous cells don't die soon enough.

That's because both diseases alter the way cells decide when to end their lives, a process called programmed cell death.

"Cell death sounds morbid, but it's essential for our health," says Douglas Green , who has spent decades studying the process at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

For example, coaxing nerve cells to live longer could help people with Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease or ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), he says, while getting tumor cells to die sooner could help people with cancer.

So researchers have been searching for disease treatments that "modify or modulate the tendency of a cell to die," Green says.

One of these researchers is Randal Hal

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