Currently, there exists an urgent need to investigate the anti-cancer effects of lidocaine on gastric cancer cells. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the anti-tumor effects and the underlying mechanisms of lidocaine in gastric cancer cells. Our results indicated that lidocaine significantly suppressed proliferation, migration and invasion and induced apoptosis in a dose-dependently manner in human gastric cancer cells. In addition, our data shown that the expression of Bcl-2 was decreased and the level of Bax was increased by lidocaine treatment. Furthermore, we found that lidocaine altered the protein expression of the MAPK pathway. p-p38 was also increased simultaneously, while the level of p38 was not changed. In summary, lidocaine has a prominent anti-tumor activity on gastric cancer cells and is a promising therapeutic agent for the treatment of gastric cancer (Fig. 4, Ref. 32). Keywords: lidocaine, gastric cancer cells, anti-tumor effect, MAPK pathway.