Apoptosis is a form of cell death that is important for normal embryonic development, maintaining normal tissue size in the fully formed individual, and eliminating cancerous or abnormal cells. Under pathological conditions, cells may undergo apoptosis, for example, because they have sustained irreversible DNA damage or because the body’s immune system recognizes a cell as being infected or cancerous. Once a given cell has been selected to die, a cascade of events follows that enables the cell to digest itself. It is believed that there are two pathways leading to apoptosis. The first is the intrinsic pathway and the way in which a cell DNA damage. The second is the extrinsic pathway and the way a body’s immune system activates apoptosis to occur in an unwanted cell. There is often overlap between the two pathways, and some cell types seem to use one pathway more than the other. In this way, individual cell types are categorized as either type I or type II cells. Upon activation of the extrinsic pathway, type I cells activate large amounts of an apoptosis enzyme called caspase 8, whereas type II cells do not. Instead, it seems that type II cells recruit the help of apoptosis enzymes from the intrinsic pathway in order to execute apoptosis. My research is focused on understanding the precise way in which the extrinsic and intrinsic pathways interact in leukemic cells with the hope that my findings will contribute to the development of new treatment strategies.