AIM To investigate the effects of homoharringtonine (HHT) on the expression of caspase-3 pro-tein and mRNA in nasopharyngeal carcinoma cells CNE-2Z. METHODS After CNE-2Z cells were treated with HHT [0(control),0.125,0.25,0.5,1 mg?L -1] for 8 h, the expression of pro-caspase-3 protein was analyzed by Western Blot and the expression of caspase-3 mRNA was detected by semi-quantitative RT-PCR. RESULTS As HHT-concentration increased, the expression of pro-caspase-3 protein decreased significantly (P