Apoptosis serves as a natural barrier to cancer development, and the resistance to apoptosis represents one of the key capabilities acquired during tumor development or progression. Impairment of the intrinsic apoptotic pathway exemplifies one of the established mechanisms of constitutive or acquired drug resistance. As most of the currently used cytotoxic drugs initiate tumor cell death by direct or indirect triggering of the intrinsic apoptotic pathway, impairment of the intrinsic pathway is associated with therapy failure. Targeting of the death receptors, however, enables induction of apoptosis even in the chemotherapy resistant cancer cells. TRAIL is a death ligand belonging to the TNFα superfamily that specifically kills tumor cells while sparing healthy tissues. Much enthusiasm has been generated for TRAIL as a highly promising targeted anti-cancer agent. However, many primary tumors have been shown to be TRAIL resistant. In attempt to overcome such an intrinsic TRAIL resistance a wide array of agents have been shown to sensitize tumor cells to TRAIL. Previous studies reported that roscovitine, a cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor, sensitized various solid cancer cells to TRAIL. In this study we analyzed the sensitivity of diverse hematologic malignancies to TRAIL-induced apoptosis and measured the...