title: CK1δ: a pharmacologically tractable Achilles' heel of Wnt-driven cancers?
abstract: Aberrant Wnt signaling has been widely accepted to be a key driver of a subset of human cancers and a heavily scrutinized molecular pathway for the development of personalized medicine. In a recently published issue ofScience Translational Medicine, Rosenberg and coworkers reported that the delta isoform of the CK1 family of serine/threonine kinases (CK1δ), an important mediator of intracellular Wnt signaling, is amplified and overexpressed in human breast tumors. They further demonstrated that pharmacological inhibition of CK1δ is efficacious for these cancers and implicate β-catenin signaling as a key target of CK1δ. In this perspective, we will discuss the salient features of this novel anti-cancer therapeutic approach and the challenges that lie ahead to translate it into a viable treatment option for cancer patients.
authors.affiliation: Programme in Cancer and Stem Cell Biology Program, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore.
authors.forename: Jit Kong
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: Cheong
authors.affiliation: Programme in Cancer and Stem Cell Biology Program, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore; ; Department of Biochemistry, National University of Singapore, Singapore; ; Department of Pediatrics, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC, USA.
authors.forename: David M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Virshup
keywords: CK1δ; Wnt; cancer; small molecule inhibitor; β-catenin