Vol.28 No.3（2006 June）：399-404

The Biological Characteristics of p21-activated Kinase and Its Contribution to Cancer
Xiao-Dong Li, Yan-Shu Li, Da-Lin Zhao¹, Feng Li^*
(The Key Laboratory of Cell Biology of Ministry of Public Health of China, Chinese Medical University, Shenyang 110001, China; ¹The Department of Physiology, Shenyang Physical Education Institute, Shenyang 110032,China)

Abstract The p21-activated kinases (PAKs), an evolutionarily conserved family of serine/threonine kinases, are expressed in many tissues. As target of the small GTPase of Rho family, PAK can be regulated by many growth factors through GTP-dependent and GTP-independent way. PAKs are important for a variety of cellular functions including cell motility, survival, cell cycle, gene regulation and angiogenesis, especially in tumor invasion and metastasis. In this review, we summarized the current knowledge of PAK with respect to emerging cellular functions and possible contribution to cancer.

Key words p21-activated kinase; cancer; signal transduction

Received: February 10, 2006 Accepted: March 20, 2006

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.30370736, No.30570966), Doctoral Fund of Ministry of Education of China (No.20050159023) and Scientific Research Foundation for Returned Scholars, Ministry of Education of China

^*Corresponding author. Tel: 86-24-23251056, Fax: 86-24-23261056, E-mail: fli@mail.cmu.edu.cn