(August 2004) Introduction Apoptosis, or programmed cell death, is a highly regulated process that allows a cell to self-degrade in order for the body to eliminate unwanted or dysfunctional cells. During apoptosis, the genome of the cell will fracture, the cell will shrink and part of the cell will disintegrate into smaller apoptotic bodies. Unlike necrosis, where the cell dies by swelling and bursting its content in the area, which causes an inflammatory response, apoptosis is a very clean and controlled process where the content of the cell is kept strictly within the cell membrane as it is degraded [1].…