The serine/threonine kinase, Akt, also known as PKB (Protein Kinase B) is one important signal transduction pathway that mediates the delay of neutrophil apoptosis caused by inflammatory mediators. Proteins controlled by the PKB/Akt pathway have been reported to prevent or reverse apoptotic-signaling pathways and regulate cell survival. In this review we discuss the role of PKB/Akt activation i...

The Akt pathway is one of the most common molecular alterations in various human malignancies. However, its involvement in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) tumorigenesis has not been well established. In this study, the status of Akt activation and expression of its upstream and downstream molecules was investigated in 64 NPC and 38 non-malignant nasopharyngeal tissues by immunohistochemistry. Th...

BACKGROUND Zuo-Jin-Wan (ZJW), a traditional Chinese medicine formula, has been identified to be effective against drug resistance in cancer. In the present study, we investigated the effect of ZJW on acquired oxaliplatin-resistant and the PI3K/Akt/NF-κB pathway in vitro. METHODS We tested the dose-response relationship of ZJW on reversing drug-resistance by CCK-8 assay and flow cytometry anal...

Platinum-based drugs such as cisplatin (cis-diammine-dichloro-platinum, also commonly known as CDDP) have dominated the drug therapy of ovarian cancer during the past three decades [1]. Cisplatin interacts with DNA to form intrastrand crosslink adducts, and its mo‐ lecular mechanism involves regulation of p53 and the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathway [2]. The phosphatidy...

The PI3K/Akt pathway regulates various stress-related cellular responses such as cell survival, cell proliferation, metabolism and protein synthesis. Many cancer cell types display the activation of this pathway, and compounds inhibiting this cell survival pathway have been extensively evaluated as anti-cancer agents. In addition to cancers, several human viruses, such as HTLV, HPV, HCV and HIV...

The PI3K/AKT pathway is one of the most important signaling networks in human breast cancer, and since it was potentially implicated in our preliminary investigations of radiation-induced rat mammary carcinomas, our aim here was to verify its role. We included mammary carcinomas induced by the chemical carcinogen 1-methyl-1-nitrosourea to determine whether any changes were radiation-specific. M...

PI3K-Akt and Ras-MAPK pathways were both implicated in cell survival and neurite-outgrowth, respectively. Akt has been suggested to be involved in neuronal survival and MAPK in neurite outgrowth during development. This study investigated if Akt, a component of PI3K-Akt pathway, and MAPK/ERK, a component of Ras-MAPK pathway, were expressed in the normal and regenerating dorsal root ganglia and ...

PURPOSE Novel antitumor therapies against the PI3K-AKT-mTOR pathway are increasingly used to treat cancer, either as single agents or in combination with chemotherapy or other targeted therapies. Although these agents are not known to be myelosuppressive, an increased risk of infection has been reported with rapamycin analogues. However, the risk of infection with new inhibitors of this pathway...

The family of serine/threonine kinases B/Akt (hereafter Akt) represents a central node in signalling pathways downstream of growth factors, cytokines, and other cellular stimuli. In mammalian cells the Akt family comprises three highly homologous members -known as Akt1/PKBalpha, Akt2/PKBbeta, and Akt3/PKBgamma- that regulate several processes including cell proliferation and survival, growth an...

Podocyte apoptosis contributes to the pathogenesis of diabetic nephropathy (DN). However, the mechanisms that mediate high glucose (HG)-induced podocyte apoptosis remain poorly understood. Conditionally immortalized mouse podocytes were cultured in HG medium. A chemical inhibitor or a specific short-hairpin RNA (shRNA) vector was used to inhibit the activation of the Notch pathway and the PI3K/...