Compounds such as ADEP, D9, and imipridones activate the HsClpP’s proteolytic activity via a common mechanism of mimicking the biomolecular effects of HsClpX association inmaintaining HsClpP in its active state while preventing its interaction with HsClpX and thereby negating the AAA+ unfoldase’s regulatory role. This dysregulation of HsClpP in turn induces apoptotic cell death in a variety of cancer cells. A major advantage of this approach is that cell death can be induced as long as HsClpP is expressed, regardless of the cell’s requirement of the protease for viability. Furthermore, the cytotoxicity of both ADEP and the imipridones increases in proportion to the cellular HsClpP level, which confers a certain degree of cellular selectivity in targeting cancer cells, many of which have upregulated expression of HsClpP.