Evasion of cell death is a hallmark of human cancers and a major cause of treatment failure. This highlights the need for the development of innovative, more effective treatment options. „Inhibitor of Apoptosis“ (IAP) proteins regulate cell death at critical control points and are aberrantly expressed in various human cancers. Therefore, IAP proteins represent promising targets for therapeutic intervention.

The recent advances on the role of IAP proteins in tumor development and progression and on strategies how to target IAP proteins for the development of novel cancer therapeutics would be the basis of a Research Topic for Frontiers in Cancer Molecular Targets and Therapeutics.

This Research Topic would highlight recent data dealing with the plethora of functions of IAP proteins, the mechanisms that control expression and activity of IAP proteins, the signaling pathways controlled by IAP proteins and the mode of cell death that is eventually relevant for the cell's demise. In addition, the current state-of-the-art on compounds and natural products that antagonists with IAP proteins and can be exploited as cancer therapeutics will be covered. Also, the relevance of developing appropriate biomarkers for clinical trials with IAP antagonists will be discussed.