Previous results have shown that the human oncoembryonic proteina-feto-protein (AFP) induces dose-dependent targeting apoptosis in tumor cells, accompanied by cytochromecrelease and caspase 3 activation. AFP posi-tively regulates cytochrome c⁄dATP-mediated apoptosome complex forma-tion in a cell-free system, stimulates release of the active caspases 9 and 3 and displaces cIAP-2 from the apoptosome and from its complex with recombinant caspases 3 and 9 [Semenkova et al. (2003) Eur. J. Biochem.
