Gastric cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer death in the world and nearly all patients who respond initially to cisplatin later develop drug resistance, indicating multi-drug resistance is an essential aspect of the failure of treatment. Phenethyl isothiocyanate (PEITC) has been implicated in inhibiting metastasis of several types of human cancer. However, the effect and potential mechanism of PEITC reversed multi-drug resistance of human gastric cancer is not fully clear. We have identified the role of PEITC in multi-drug resistance reversal of human gastric cancer SGC7901/DDP cell line. PEITC inhibited cisplatin-resistant human SGC7901/DDP cell growth in a dose-dependent manner, causing increased apoptosis, ROS generation, glutathione depletion, accumulation of Rhodamine-123, decreased expression of P-glycoprotein and cell cycle arrest. mRNA and protein expression of the multi-drug resistance gene (MDR1), multi-drug resistance-associated protein (MRP1), excision repair cross-complementing gene 1 (ERCC1), survivin, and Mad2 was decreased, and phosphorylation of Akt and transcriptional activation of NF-kappa B were suppressed. PEITC may be useful as the therapeutic strategy for overcoming multi-drug resistance through suppressing the PI3K-Akt pathway in human gastric cancer.