We reported that L-asparaginase not only induced caspase 3-dependent apoptosis but also triggered obvious autophagy in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) cells, accompanied by inhibition of Akt/mTOR and activation of the ERK signaling pathway (Song et al., 2015), as illustrated in Figure 1. This evidence concerns the gene AKT1 and chronic myelogenous leukemia, BCR-ABL1 positive.