The serine/threonine kinase glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK-3) was initially identified and studied in the regulation of glycogen synthesis. GSK-3 functions in a wide range of cellular processes. Aberrant activity of GSK-3 has been implicated in many human pathologies including: bipolar depression, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, cancer, non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM)...

BACKGROUND Although many studies have shown glycogen synthase kinase-3β (GSK-3β) was associated with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and implicated with a wide range of cancers, the role of GSK-3β in hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC) and the correlation among GSK-3β, T2DM and HCC remains unclear. Our objectives were to identify the effect of p-Ser9-GSK-3β on the prognosis of patients with HCC and t...

Glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK-3) is a highly conserved serine/threonine protein kinase implicated in diverse cellular processes. Activity of GSK-3 is essential for meiotic chromatin segregation in oocytes, yet expression and/or function of GSK-3 have not been reported in mammalian preimplantation embryos. Objectives of this study were to characterize GSK-3 protein expression/phosphorylation i...

Mixed lineage kinase 3 (MLK3) is a mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase kinase member that activates the c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) pathway. Aberrant activation of MLK3 has been implicated in neurodegenerative diseases. Similarly, glycogen synthase kinase (GSK)-3beta has also been shown to activate JNK and contribute to neuronal apoptosis. Here, we show a functional interaction between ML...

Expression of GSK-3α is increased in aging hearts and those subjected to hemodynamic overload. Overexpressed GSK-3α inhibits ERK and enhances pressure overload (PO)-induced cardiac dysfunction. We studied whether suppression of the MEK1/ERK pathway contributes to cardiac responses induced by overexpressed GSK-3α using constitutively active MEK1 (CA-MEK1)/GSK-3α bigenic mice (bigenic mice), whic...

ER-stress induced apoptosis of beta cells is an important mechanism of type 2 diabetes. PERK can be activated by the overactivation of ER-stress which will induce beta cells apoptosis. This study is to reveal the role of ERstress, GSK-3 and the potential signal pathway during beta cells apoptosis. The alterations of ER-stress related signal factors and kinases induced by OA are assessed by west...

Glucocorticoids are the only therapy that has been demonstrated to alter the progress of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), the most common muscular dystrophy in children. However, glucocorticoids disturb skeletal muscle metabolism and hamper myogenesis and muscle regeneration. The mechanisms involved in the glucocorticoid-mediated suppression of myogenic differentiation are not fully understoo...

The phosphatidylinositol 3 kinase/protein kinase B (PI3K/Akt) pathway mediates the high-glucose-induced lipid accumulation in the renal tubular cells in diabetes. Studies have revealed that the downstream target genes of phospho-Akt, BCL2-associated death promoter (Bad) and glycogen synthase kinase-3β (GSK-3β) are associated with lipid accumulation in hepatic cells and preadipocytes. In the pre...

Glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK-3) is a serine/threonine kinase that functions in numerous signaling pathways initiated by diverse stimuli. The functions of GSK-3 in cancer differ depending on cell type. In the present study, we examined the effects of a specific GSK-3 inhibitor on the regulation of osteosarcoma cell proliferation and apoptosis. Immunohistochemical analysis and real-time revers...