PMA functions as an autophagy inhibitor through activation of a serine threonine kinase

Serine-threonine kinases have vital roles in various signalling pathways such as proliferation, differentiation and apoptosis. Thus, they served as crucial players in health and disease including cancer. Isozymes of these families show tissue specific expression patterns and function specifically in different pathways. Autophagy is another major process in the cell which degrades long-lived, non-functional organelles and proteins to sustain the homeostasis. Moreover, as well as serine threonine kinases, autophagy was also found to relate with cancer in different stages. To date, relationship between serine-threonine protein kinases and autophagy has not been well studied. Therefore, we utilized PMA which is one of the three different activatory signals of this kinase family to activate the certain subgroup and we studied the role of these kinases on autophagy regulation.