Validation of new therapeutic targets calls for the advance in innovative assays that probe both spatial and temporal relationships in signaling networks. Cell death assays have already found a widespread use in pharmacological profiling of anticancer drugs. Such assays are, however, predominantly restricted to end point DEAD/LIVE parameter that provides only a snapshot of inherently stochastic process such as tumor cell death. Development of new methods that can offer kinetic real-time analysis would be highly advantageous for the pharmacological screening and predictive toxicology. In the present work we outline innovative protocols for the real-time analysis of tumor cell death, based on propidium iodide (PI) and SYTOX Green probes. These can be readily adapted to both flow cytometry and time-lapse fluorescence imaging. Considering vast time savings and kinetic data acquisition such assays have the potential to be applied in a number of areas including accelerated anticancer drug discovery and high-throughput screening routines.