FoxM1 as a Novel Therapeutic Target for Cancer Drug Therapy

Abstract

<b>Background:</b> Current cancer therapy mainly focuses on identifying novel targets crucial for tumorigenesis. TheFoxM1 is of preference as an anticancer target, due to its significance in execution of mitosis, cell cycle progression,as well as other signal pathways leading to tumorigenesis. FoxM1 is partially regulated by oncoproteins or tumorsuppressors, which are often mutated, lost, or overexpressed in human cancer. Since sustaining proliferatingsignaling is an important hallmark of cancer, FoxM1 is overexpressed in a series of human malignancies. Alargescalegene expression analysis also identified FoxM1 as a differentially-expressed gene in most solid tumors.Furthermore, overexpressed FoxM1 is correlated with the prognosis of cancer patients, as verified in a seriesof malignancies by Cox regression analysis. Thus, extensive studies have been conducted to explore the roles ofFoxM1 in tumorigenesis, making it an attractive target for anticancer therapy. Several antitumor drugs havebeen reported to target or inhibit FoxM1 expression in different cancers, and down-regulation of FoxM1 alsoabrogates drug resistance in some cancer cell lines, highlighting a promising future for FoxM1 application inthe clinic.