Objective To investigate the effect of activated protein kinase C receptor 1 (RACK1) on the proliferation and apoptosis of human cervical cancer cells and its potential mechanism. Methods The cervical cancer tissues of 24 patients diagnosed as cervical squamous cell carcinoma (CSCC), admitted in the First Affiliated Hospital of Xinjiang Medical University from Dec. 2020 to Dec. 2021, were collected as the experimental group (CSCC group), and 24 normal cervical (NC) tissues were collected as the control group (NC group). The expression levels of RACK1 mRNA in CSCC tissues and NC tissues and in proliferation and apoptosis related genes c-myc, caspase-3, caspase-9, Bax and Bcl-2 in CSCC tissue samples were detected by qRT-PCR, and the correlation between RACK1 mRNA expression and apoptosis-related genes was analyzed by Spearman rank correlation. qRT-PCR and Western blotting were used to detect the expression of RACK1 in cervical cancer cells C33a and SiHa and normal cervical epithelial cells H8. C33a and SiHa cells were transfected with lentivirus to silence the expression of RACK1. According to different treatments, they were divided into: normal control (NC) group, sh-NON (RACK1 silent expression no-load group), shRACK1-1(RACK1 silent expression group 1), shRACK1-2 (RACK1 silent expression group 2), and the transfection efficiency was verified.MTT assay and plate cloning assay were used to detect cell proliferation, and flow cytometry was performed to detect cell apoptosis.After RACK1 was silenced, qRT-PCR was used to detect the expression levels of c-myc, caspase-3, caspase-9, Bax and Bcl-2. Western blotting was used to detect the expression levels of c-myc, caspase-3, caspase-9, Bax, Bcl-2, phosphorylated Janus kinase 2 (p-JAK2),JAK2, phosphorylated cell signal transduction and transcription activating factor 3 (p-STAT3) and STAT3. Results The expression level of RACK1 mRNA was significantly higher in CSCC tissue than that in NC tissue (P<0.001). Spearman rank correlation analysis showed that the expression level of RACK1 mRNA in cervical cancer tissues was significantly negative correlated with caspase-3(r=–0.679, P<0.001), caspase-9 (r=–0.735, P<0.001), Bax (r=–0.691, P<0.001) mRNA expression, but positively correlated with c-myc (r=0.713, P<0.001) and Bcl-2 (r=0.846, P<0.001) mRNA expression. qRT-PCR and Western blotting showed that compared with H8 cells, RACK1 mRNA and protein were highly expressed in C33a and SiHa cells (P<0.001). After RACK1 silence, the expression levels of RACK1 mRNA and protein declined obviously, the proliferation and colony formation ability also decreased,while the apoptosis level was significantly increased (P<0.001) in shRACK1-1 and shRACK1-2 groups than those in sh-NON group (P<0.001). In addition, compared with sh-NON group, the expression of caspase-3, caspase-9, Bax, p-JAK2 and p-STAT3 were significantly increased in shRACK1-1 and shRACK1-2 groups, but of c-myc and Bcl-2 decreased significantly (P<0.001 or P<0.01). Conclusion RACK1 is highly expressed in cervical cancer tissues and cells. Targeted silencing RACK1 gene can effectively reduce the expression of proliferation related protein c-myc and anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2, but significantly increase the expression of apoptosis related protein caspase-3, caspase-9 and Bax in cervical cancer cells, which may be related to the activation of JAK2/STAT3 signaling pathway.