He et al. Journal of Experimental & Clinical Cancer Research 2011, 30:109 http://www.jeccr.com/content/30/1/109 Page 8 of 9 Figure 7 CDK8 and b-catenin protein expression in colon tumor and adjacent normal tissues detected by IHC. The expression of CDK8 (left) and b-catenin (right) was stained brown and present in tumor tissue and adjacent normal tissues. Representative sites with negative (a, 400 X ), moderate positive (c, 400 × ), strongly positive (e, 400 ×) expression of CDK8 and corresponding weakly positive (b, 400 ×), moderate positive (d, 400 ×), strongly positive (f, 400 ×) expression of b-catenin. suppression of cell proliferation and promotion of apop- tosis. Further studies would be of interest to determine whether silencing CDK8 and other factors together could amplificate the silencing effect of the b-catenin. Based on the high specificity of CDK8 to b-catenin, CDK8 may be used as an alternative target in the regu- lation of colon cancer. Given the number of CDK inhi- bitors are being applied in clinical practice [25,26],