The results of recent studies have shown that aberrant expression of NLK is significantly associated with the initiation and progression of various types of human cancers, as well as clinicopathologic features and survival rate.
NLK is critical for cancer cell cycle progression, and tumorigenesis in NSCLC, NLK knockdown, and metformin treatment inhibit cancer cell proliferation and stemness.
Although, NLK is known to be a tumor suppressor in Wnt/beta-catenin signaling pathway of colon cancer, the other events occurring downstream of NLK pathways in other types of cancer remain unclear.