The inhibition of apoptosis is one of the key features of cancer so finding ways to manipulate and overcome this inhibition to form the apoptosome and activate caspases are important in the development of new cancer treatments. The ability to directly cause apoptosome activation is valuable in cancer therapies because the infected cancerous genes are unable to be destroyed causing a continuation of the cancer to form. By activating the apoptosome by an outside stimulus apoptosis can occur and get rid of the mutated cells. Numerous approaches to achieve this are currently being pursued including recombinant biomolecules, antisense strategies, gene therapy and classic organic combinatorial chemistry to target specific apoptotic regulators in the approach to correct excessive or deficient cell death in human diseases.