This review highlights recent advances that elucidate how cancer cells employ ACK1 kinase to their advantage and discusses some of the novel ACK1 inhibitors that have shown promise in pre-clinical studies.
The cancer-associated mutations potentiate the ability of Ack1 to promote proliferation and migration, suggesting that point mutation is a mechanism for Ack1 deregulation.
In the present study we sought to investigate whether negative targeting of TNK2 by siRNA could be used to inhibit cancer cell invasion, to establish the contribution of its effect on the EGFR and to consequently attempt to resolve the issue of TNK2's mechanism of action.
We further show that overexpression of Ack1 in cancer cell lines can increase the invasive phenotype of these cells both in vitro and in vivo and leads to increased mortality in a mouse model of metastasis.