The effects of polyacetylenes on living membrances, rat erythrocyte and murine leukemic L1210 cell as well as artificial lipid bilayer were determined to investigate the cytotoxic mechanism of polyacetylenes against cancer cell lines. As results, panaxydol and panaxynol caused erythrocyte hemolysis dose-dependently while panaxytriol had no lysis. For liposomes composed of phosphatidyl choline (PC) and phosphatidic acid(PA), all three polyacetylenes supressed the osmotic behavior at the same degree.