Abstract
Importance of the field: Nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) is activated by a variety of cancer-promoting agents. The reciprocal activation between NF-κB and inflammatory cytokines makes NF-κB important for inflammation-associated cancer development. Both the constitutive and anticancer therapeutic-induced NF-κB activation blunts the anticancer activities of the therapy. Elucidating the roles of NF-κB in cancer facilitates developing approaches for cancer prevention and therapy.
Areas covered in this review: By searching PubMed, we summarize the progress of studies on NF-κB in carcinogenesis and cancer cells' drug resistance in recent 10 years.
What the reader will gain: The mechanisms by which NF-κB activation pathways are activated; the roles and mechanisms of NF-κB in cell survival and proliferation, and in carcinogenesis and cancer cells' response to therapy; recent development of NF-κB-modulating means and their application in cancer prevention and therapy.
Take home message: NF-κB is involved in cancer development, modulating NF-κB activation pathways has important implications in cancer prevention and therapy. Due to the complexity of NF-κB roles in different cancers, careful evaluation of NF-κB's in each cancer type is crucial in this regard. More cancer cell-specific NF-κB inhibiting means are desired for improving anticancer efficacy and reducing systemic toxicity.
Acknowledgements
We apologise to our colleagues whose work was unable to be cited due to the space limit. The authors thank V Fisher for editing the manuscript.