Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2002 May 15;62(10):2971-5.

Critical involvement of the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/Akt pathway in anchorage-independent growth and hematogeneous intrahepatic metastasis of liver cancer

Affiliations
  • PMID: 12019180

Critical involvement of the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/Akt pathway in anchorage-independent growth and hematogeneous intrahepatic metastasis of liver cancer

Kazuaki Nakanishi et al. Cancer Res. .

Abstract

In the multistep process of metastasis, "anchorage-independent growth," where cancer cells need to survive without cell-substratum interaction, is supposed to be important. In this study, we found that anchorage-independent growth analyzed using the soft agar colony formation assay correlated with hematogeneous intrahepatic metastasis of liver cancer cell lines and also Akt activation status. Two highly metastatic liver cancer cell lines showed high Akt activity and formed many colonies in soft agar, whereas three nonmetastatic cell lines showed less Akt activity and formed fewer colonies. Inhibition of Akt activation in the highly metastatic cell line Li7 by transfection with kinase-dead Akt or the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase inhibitor, LY294002, resulted in formation of fewer colonies in soft agar than was the case with control cells. Moreover, in orthotopic implantation model, this inhibition resulted in a reduced rate of hematogeneous intrahepatic metastasis. These findings indicated that anchorage-independent growth regulated by phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/Akt pathway plays a critical role in metastasis, and that this could be a potential therapeutic target to combat metastasis.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

Cited by

Publication types

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources