CASP3 and breast carcinoma: In order to investigate whether apoptosis was really this form of programmed cell death that was initiated by the tested variants of DS in the luminal breast cancer cells during the short-term incubation, we examined the activity of the so-called effector caspases (caspase-3/7) in the cultures that had been exposed to these molecules for the same time periods as in the cell death assay.