In patients with localized prostate cancer, radical prostatectomy and radiation therapy, although effective in controlling localized disease, are often associated with significant side effects attributable to injury of adjacent tissues. Moreover, patients with metastatic disease eventually fail systemic hormonal or chemotherapy because of the development of progressive, refractory disease. In this study, we evaluated the safety and efficacy of a novel suicide gene therapy that could potentially spare normal tissue while bypassing molecular mechanisms of apoptosis resistance by using chemically inducible effector caspases to trigger apoptosis in prostate cancer cells. Initially, we compared the ability of a panel of inducible Fas signaling intermediates to kill human and murine prostate cancer cell lines. On the basis of the superior killing by downstream caspase-1 and caspase-3, replication-deficient adenoviral vectors expressing conditional caspase-1 (Ad-G/iCasp1) or caspase-3 (Ad-G/iCasp3), regulated by nontoxic, lipid-permeable, chemical inducers of dimerization (CID), were constructed. Upon vector transduction followed by CID administration, aggregation and activation of these recombinant caspases occur, leading to rapid apoptosis. In vitro, both human (LNCaP and PC-3) and murine (TRAMP-C2 and TRAMP-C2G) prostate cancer cell lines were efficiently transduced and killed in a CID-dependent fashion. In vivo, direct injection of Ad-G/iCasp1 into s.c. TRAMP-C2 tumors caused focal but extensive apoptosis without evidence for a bystander effect at the maximal viral dose (i.e., 2.5 x 10(10) viral particles/25 microl) in host animals that also received CID compared with control animals. Treatment with Ad-G/iCasp1 plus CID resulted in a transient, yet significant, reduction both in tumor growth and volume compared with tumors treated with vector but not CID (P < 0.035) or vector-diluent plus CID (P < 0.022), both of which grew more rapidly. These results demonstrate that CID-regulated, caspase-based suicide gene therapy is safe and can inhibit the growth of experimental prostate cancer in vitro and in vivo through potent induction of apoptosis, providing a rationale for further development.