Apoptosis is a critical event in the deletion of B lymphocytes prior to their migration to the periphery. Synthetic peroxisome proliferator activated receptor gamma (PPARgamma) agonists, including the drug GW7845 and the environmental contaminant mono-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, as well as an endogenous ligand, 15-deoxy-Delta(12,14)-prostaglandin J(2), induce clonally unrestricted apoptosis in pro/pre-B cells. Considering that PPARgamma agonists are used clinically for the treatment of diabetes and postulated to be useful as chemotherapeutics, we used GW7845 as a model PPARgamma agonist to examine the mechanism of cell death that may contribute to tumor killing as well as normal bone marrow B lymphocyte toxicity. GW7845 induced rapid mitochondrial membrane depolarization and release of cytochrome c, along with nearly concurrent activation of capases-2, -3, -8, and -9 in primary pro-B cells and BU-11 cells, a nontransformed pro/pre-B cell line. GW7845-induced apoptosis was reduced significantly in Bax-deficient and Apaf-1 mutant primary pro-B cells, supporting the conclusion that GW7845-induced apoptosis is mitochondria- and apoptosome-dependent. Using benzyloxycarbonyl-VAD-fluoromethyl ketone (VAD-FMK) as a pan-caspase inhibitor, we demonstrated that an initial cytochrome c release occurred independently of caspase activation and that only caspase-9 activation was partially caspase independent. The attenuation of GW7845-induced apoptosis by multiple FMK-labeled peptide sequences suggests that multiple caspase pathways are responsible for initiating and executing apoptosis. The strong activation of Bid provides a mechanism by which caspases-2, -3, and -8 may amplify the apoptotic signal. These data support the hypothesis that pharmacologic concentrations of PPARgamma agonists induce an intrinsic apoptotic pathway that is driven in normal bone marrow B cells by multiple amplification loops.