Abstract: Objective: Nowadays, the main reatment on leukemia is traditional radiochemotherapy with serious side effects and discouraged long time effects. It is necessary to look for new drugs for leukemia therapy. To study the possibility to treat leukemia with gossypol, we investigated the effects of gossypol on apoptosis in 3 classic human myeloid leukemia cell lines. Methods: The cytotoxic activity of gossypol on leukemia cell lines were detected by means of MTT assay. Apoptosis was identified and analyzed by morphology, cell cycle, and DNA gel electrophoresis, etc. Result: Our data showed that gossypol could selectly suppress the proliferation and induce apoptosis in all the three myeloid leukemia cell lines in a dose dependent manner(>6μM). Conclusion: Gossypol could selectively induce apoptosis in the myeloid leukemia cell lines. It suggests that gossypol may be an ideal drug for leukemia therapy.