Apoptosis is the major form of cell suicide. Most conventional anticancer agents induce apoptosis indirectly. Although chemiotherapeutic drugs should selectively kill only tumor cells, normal cells are often susceptible to cytotoxic or cytostatic effects of these agents. This is a reason of potentially harmful side effects including inflammation and damage to the surrounding normal tissue. A new therapeu- tic approach in cancer treatment is the use of substances that stimulate cytokine production, angiogenesis inhibitors, gene therapies, antisense oligonucleotides and monoclonal antibodies.

Apoptosis is a natural process at reproductive age in women. It concerns granulosa and thecal cells. This process influences on the amount of ovarian follicles, luteal corpus sufficiency and on steroidogenesis and menopause. Apoptosis cause normal function and homeostasis of ovarian cells. Knowing the mechanism of apoptosis in human ovary to optimalize the management in endocrinologia disorders and neoplasmus.

General characteristics of apoptosis and mechanisms leading to activation of caspases and endonucleases, the main executors of apoptosis is described. The crucial role in these processes of mitochondria and the proteins released from them procaspase 9, cytochrom c and AIF factor is also shown. Information is also presented about membrane receptors, their ligands as well as various regulatory proteins, those from BCL-2/BAX and IAPs families included. It is pointed out that changes in the level of expression and/or properties of regulatory proteins characterize various tumor cells.