GSK-3β as a driving force in ovarian cancer

Ovarian cancer is one of the most lethal malignancies in women.Identification of new therapeutic targets would provideopportunities for developing potentially more effective treatment regimes.In the July issue of Cell Research,Cao et al.reports that glycogen synthase kinase-3β(GSK-3β)plays an important role in positively regulating the proliferation ofhuman ovarian cancer cells,and thus it may represent such a target[1].GSK-3β is a serine/threonine kinase that is knownto be involved in regulation ofβ-catenin signaling,where it participates in the formation of a multi-component destructioncomplex that promotes the phosphorylation and subsequent degradation of β-catenin.Given that overactive β-cateninsignaling is involved in many forms of human cancer,this classic mode of GSK-3β action should qualify it as a"tumorsuppressor".Intriguingly,however,two recent studies have implicated that GSK-3β may actually play a pro-tumor rolein pancreatic and colorectal cancers[2,3].Since ovarian tumors often exhibit increased expression of GSK-3β,theserecent findings prompted Cao et al.to examine the potential role of GSK-3β in ovarian cancer cells.