ArticleOncotarget2012
Development of an orally-administrative MELK-targeting inhibitor that suppresses the growth of various types of human cancer.
Article in Oncotarget, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 99 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
99 citing papers in PubMed, 146 citations in OpenAlex.
- Citron Kinase, a mitotic kinase with increasing significance in cancer.Cell cycle (Georgetown, Tex.) · 2026Review
- HIPK2 exhibits context dependent dualistic effects and combinatorial inhibition of HIPK2-NLK-MAPK11 axis manifests synergism against gastric cancer.Human cell · 2026Article
- Frags2Drugs: A Novel In Silico Fragment-Based Approach to the Discovery of Kinase Inhibitors.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Discovery of the MELK-Nucleostemin Axis in Glioblastoma: Implications for p53 Regulation and Tumor Progression.Journal of microbiology and biotechnology · 2026Article
- Maternal Embryonic Leucine Zipper Kinase (Biology · 2026Review
- The role of MELK in cancer: mechanisms and therapeutic options.Frontiers in oncology · 2026Review
- Up-Regulation of MELK Promotes Cell Growth and Invasion by Accelerating G1/S Transition and Indicates Poor Prognosis in Lung Adenocarcinoma.Molecular biotechnology · 2025Article
- Targeting MELK in tumor cells and tumor microenvironment: from function and mechanism to therapeutic application.Clinical & translational oncology : official publication of the Federation of Spanish Oncology Societies and of the National Cancer Institute of Mexico · 2025Review
- Potential Biomarkers for Predicting the Risk of Developing Into Long COVID After COVID-19 Infection.Immunity, inflammation and disease · 2025Article
- Maternal Embryonic Leucine Zipper Kinase (MELK) as a Promising Therapeutic Target in Triple Negative Breast Cancer.Anti-cancer agents in medicinal chemistry · 2025Review
- Melk facilitates pulmonary artery smooth muscle cell proliferation and migration in pulmonary hypertension via modulation of YAP/TAZ signaling.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2025Article
- Gene Co-Expression Network Analysis Associated with Endometrial Cancer Tumorigenesis and Survival Outcomes.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Article
- Exploration of MELK as a downstream of Del-1 and druggable targets in triple-negative breast cancer.Breast cancer research and treatment · 2024Article
- AI identifies potent inducers of breast cancer stem cell differentiation based on adversarial learning from gene expression data.Briefings in bioinformatics · 2024Article
- Article
- TGFβ1-driven SMAD2/3 phosphorylation and myofibroblast emergence are fully dependent on the TGFβ1 pre-activation of MAPKs and controlled by maternal leucine zipper kinase.Cellular signalling · 2024Article
- Spatiotemporal regulation of MELK during mitosis.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2024Article
- Prostate Cancer Progression Relies on the Mitotic Kinase Citron Kinase.Cancer research · 2023Article
- Maternal Embryonic Leucine Zipper Kinase is Associated with Metastasis in Triple-negative Breast Cancer.Cancer research communications · 2023Article
- ATM-SPARK: A GFP phase separation-based activity reporter of ATM.Science advances · 2023Article
39 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We previously reported MELK (maternal embryonic leucine zipper kinase) as a novel therapeutic target for breast cancer. MELK was also reported to be highly upregulated in multiple types of human cancer. It was implied to play indispensable roles in cancer cell survival and indicated its involvement in the maintenance of tumor-initiating cells. We conducted a high-throughput screening of a compound library followed by structure-activity relationship studies, and successfully obtained a highly potent MELK inhibitor OTSSP167 with IC₅₀ of 0.41 nM. OTSSP167 inhibited the phosphorylation of PSMA1 (proteasome subunit alpha type 1) and DBNL (drebrin-like), which we identified as novel MELK substrates and are important for stem-cell characteristics and invasiveness. The compound suppressed mammosphere formation of breast cancer cells and exhibited significant tumor growth suppression in xenograft studies using breast, lung, prostate, and pancreas cancer cell lines in mice by both intravenous and oral administration. This MELK inhibitor should be a promising compound possibly to suppress the growth of tumor-initiating cells and be applied for treatment of a wide range of human cancer.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.