Tabriz University of Medical Sciences Advanced Pharmaceutical Bulletin 2228-5881 9 2 2019 06 01 Understanding Apoptosis and Apoptotic Pathways Targeted Cancer Therapeutics 205 218 10.15171/apb.2019.024 EN Rehmat Jan https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9217-9084 Gul-e-Saba Chaudhry https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4555-8572 REVIEW 10.15171/apb.2019.024 2018 08 22 2018 12 20 Various physiological processes involve appropriate tissue developmental process and homeostasis - the pathogenesis of several diseases connected with deregulatory apoptosis process. Apoptosis plays a crucial role in maintaining a balance between cell death and division, evasion of apoptosis results in the uncontrolled multiplication of cells leading to different diseases such as cancer. Currently, the development of apoptosis targeting anticancer drugs has gained much interest since cell death induced by apoptosis causes minimal inflammation. The understanding of complexities of apoptosis mechanism and how apoptosis is evolved by tumor cells to oppose cell death has focused research into the new strategies designed to induce apoptosis in cancer cells. This review focused on the underlying mechanism of apoptosis and the dysregulation of apoptosis modulators involved in the extrinsic and intrinsic apoptotic pathway, which include death receptors (DRs) proteins, cellular FLICE inhibitory proteins (c-FLIP), anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 proteins, inhibitors of apoptosis proteins (IAPs), tumor suppressor (p53) in cancer cells along with various current clinical approaches aimed to selectively induce apoptosis in cancer cells.