Abstract

Fibrosis is a common process of tissue repair response to multiple injuries in all chronic progressive diseases, which featured with excessive deposition of extracellular matrix. Actually fibrosis can occur in all organs and tends to be nonreversible with the progresses of the diseases. Different cells types in different organs are involved in the occurrence and development of fibrosis, i.e. hepatic stellate cell, pancreatic stellate cell, fibroblasts, myofibroblasts. Present studies have shown that several programmed cell deaths including apoptosis, autophagy, ferroptosis, and necroptosis were closely related to organ fibrosis. Among these programmed cell deathes type, necroptosis, an emerging regulated cell death type were regard as a huge potential target to ameliorate organ fibrosis. In this review, we summarized the role of necroptosis signaling in organ fibrosis, and collected the present small molecule compounds targeting necroptosis. In addition, we have discussed the potential challenges, opportunities and open questions in using necroptosis signaling as a potential target for antifibrotic therapies.