Many apoptosis-related heart diseases such as myocardial infarction, cardiomyopathies, and heart failure severely impair human's health and life. Currently, a key focus for the medical researchers is to find out effective ways to prevent or treat these heart diseases. ARC (apoptosis repressor with caspase recruitment domain) is the first anti-apoptotic protein so far identified to be highly and specifically expressed in the cardiac tissue. ARC could be structurally phosphorylated and involved in various signaling pathways during apoptosis.