During many years, Sten Orrenius’ interest was focused on the crosstalk between different modes of toxic cell death. This work was best illustrated by the observation of the presence of an interplay between apoptosis and necrosis in glutamate-induced neuronal cell death, in which glutamate was found to induce either early necrosis or delayed apoptosis in cerebellar granule cells. Sten Orrenius was able to show that cell death is the ultimate outcome of toxicity. He proved that cell death mechanisms activated by toxic compounds are important for risk assessment and for any attempts to design less toxic analogs. In one of his last papers, Sten Orrenius concluded that a better understanding of the various cell death programs is important for the future of toxicology.