We found that treatment with DAP significantly inhibited cell proliferation, increased apoptosis induction and suppressed autophagy in AML cells in vitro, and inhibited tumor growth in an AML mouse model in vivo. We also showed that inhibition of PDK1 with DAP increased the cleavage of pro-apoptotic proteins (PARP and Caspase 3) and decreased the expression of the anti-apoptotic proteins (BCL-xL and BCL-2) and autophagy regulators (ULK1, Beclin-1 and Atg). Here, PDK1 is linked to acute myeloid leukemia.