Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is a hematological disorder initiating from blood-forming cells of bone marrow. ALL is characterized by the Philadelphia chromosome (Ph) arisen from a translocation between chromosome 9 and 22. This chromosome encodes BCR-ABL oncogene that is a driver regulator. BCR-ABL based studies improved tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI) including imatinib, dasatinib, nilotinib, and ponatinib to eliminate this disease. However, the studies on Ph+ ALL patients showed that bioactive sphingolipids have crucial roles in the elimination of the positive effects of these drugs by activating the proliferation-associated pathways, inhibition of apoptosis and increasing drug resistance of the cells treated with these drugs. In this study, therapeutic potential of apigenin, which is a natural flavonoid obtained from celery, parsley and chamomile was investigated on Ph+ ALL cell line, SD-1, and non-cancerous lung cell line Beas-2B. The cytotoxic effects of apigenin on SD-1 and Beas-2B cells were determined by MTT cell proliferation assay. The cell viability analyses on SD-1 cells were conducted by Trypan blue dye exclusion assay following apigenin treatment. Cell cycle and apoptosis analyses including Annexin V/PI-dual staining and JC-1 dye-based mitochondrial membrane potential were examined by flow cytometry. Expression levels of bioactive sphingolipids were determined by RT-PCR and western blot. The cytotoxic analyses indicated that apigenin selectively inhibits the expression of SD-1 cells whereas the IC50 value of apigenin for SD-1 cells has the anti-apoptotic roles in Beas-2B cells. SD-1 cells experience cell death via apoptosis-related pathways and apigenin might arrest the cells at G2/M phases. Indeed, the changes in the expression levels of bioactive sphingolipids genes indicated their roles in apigenin-induced apoptosis in SD-1 cells. This study investigated the cytotoxic and apoptotic effects of apigenin on SD-1 cells and the roles of apigenin in bioactive sphingolipid metabolism for the first time.