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The Role Of Cdk8 In Metastatic Growth Of Colon Cancer, Jiaxin Liang

Theses and Dissertations

Unresectable hepatic metastases of colon cancer poorly respond to existing therapies and are a major cause of colon cancer lethality. Transcription- regulating Mediator kinase CDK8, an early clinical stage drug target, is amplified or overexpressed in many colon cancers and CDK8 expression correlates with shorter patient survival. Here we show that CDK8 inhibition does not generally suppress proliferation of CDK8-overexpressing colon cancer cells but nevertheless CDK8 knockdown by shRNA or CDK8 kinase inhibition by a selective small-molecule drug candidate suppresses metastatic growth of mouse and human colon cancer cells in the liver. This effect is due at least in part …