Programmed cell death via apoptosis is characteristically disturbed in human cancers. This facilitates not only tumor formation and progression, but also treatment resistance. Since many currently applied anticancer treatment strategies rely on intact cell death signaling pathways for their therapeutic efficacy, a better understanding of the regulatory mechanisms that control cell death signaling pathways is critical to bypass resistance. Thus, reactivation of cell death programs in cancer cells may open new perspectives for more effective and more tumor-selective, yet less toxic anticancer therapies.