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Suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid (SAHA) is a newly emerging histone deacetylase inhibitor (HDACi) and has been approved in phase II clinical trials for treating patients with cutaneous T-cell lymphoma. Autophagy is a conserved self-digestion process that degrades cytoplasmic materials and recycles long-lived proteins and organelles within cells. In this study, we demonstrate that SAHA stimulates autophagy in Jurkat T-leukemia cells, which was evidenced by the appearance of autophagic vacuoles, formation of acidic vesicular organelles, recruitment of LC3-II to the autophagosomes and conversion of LC3-I to LC3-II . Moreover, SAHA treatment upregulated expression of Beclin 1 and Atg7 and promoted formation of the Atg12-Atg5 conjugate. Furthermore, inhibition of autophagy by chloroquine (CQ) enhanced SAHA-induced apoptosis. To determine the underlying mechanism of SAHA-induced autophagy, two complementary proteomic approaches (2-DE and SILAC), coupled with ESI-Q-TOF MS/MS analysis are utilized to profile differentially expressed proteins between control and SAHA-treated Jurkat T-leukemia cells. In total, 72 proteins were identified with significant alterations. Cluster analysis of the changed proteins reveal several groups of enzymes associated with energy metabolism, anti-oxidative stress and cellular redox control, which suggested an abnormal reactive oxygen species (ROS) production in SAHA-treated Jurkat T-leukemia cells. These observations were further confirmed by ROS chemiluminescence assay. Mechanistic studies revealed that SAHA-triggered autophagy was mediated by ROS production, which could be attenuated by N-acetyl cysteine (NAC), a ROS inhibitor. Finally, we illustrated that Akt-mTOR signaling, a major suppressive cascade of autophagy, was inactivated by SAHA treatment. Taken together, our study identifies autophagy as a reaction to counter increased ROS and is thus involved as a cellular prosurvival mechanism in response to SAHA treatment.