Although the physicochemical properties of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) and anticancer peptides (ACPs) are very similar, it remains unclear which specific parameter(s) of ACPs confer the major anticancer activity. By answering how to construct a short AMP/ACP that could easily be synthesized in the most cost effective way plus conferring a maximum anticancer effect is a very important scientific breakthrough in the development of protein/peptide drugs. In this study, an 18-amino-acids antimicrobial peptide, AcrAP1 (named AP1-Z1), was used as a template. Bioinformatics algorithms were then performed to design its six mutants (AP1-Z3a, AP1-Z3b, AP1-Z5a, AP1-Z5b, AP1-Z7, and AP1-Z9). After a series of in vitro experiments plus intensive computational analysis, the data demonstrated that AP1-Z5a and AP1-Z5b induced both apoptosis and anti-angiogenic effects to achieve the maximum anticancer activity. Specifically, the most effective mutant, AP1-Z5b, exhibited high selectivity for the charged membrane in molecular dynamics simulations. These findings clearly demonstrated that both charge and hydrophobicity play an important role and are necessary to reach an optimum equilibrium for optimizing the anticancer activity of AMPs. Overall, the present study provides a very crucial theoretical basis and important scientific evidence on the key physicochemical parameters of ACP drugs development.,© 2019 The Author(s).