Abstract: TLR3,a pattern recognition receptor（PRR）, recognizes pathogen associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) double-stranded RNA（dsRNA） to initiate immunity response. Recent publications demonstrated that TLR3 played an important role in promoting cells apoptosis in a range types of cells.Particularly, TLR3 tends to inducing cell apoptosis in tumor cells.This provides a potential evidence for tumor therapy by dsRNA.

Key words: TLR3 (toll like receptor 3), tumor cell, apoptosis, dsRNA（double-stranded RNA）