Novel Effect of Antihelminthic Niclosamide on

Colon cancer is one of the most frequent causes of cancer death worldwide. Despite intensive health-care programs for early diag-nosis of colon cancer, the majority of patients are still diagnosed at an advanced stage of the disease (1). Progression of colon cancer is particularly associated with metastasis formation. Patients with nonmetastatic, local stage I tumors have a 5-year survival rate of 90%. However, this rate drastically drops to approximately 10% when distant metastases have formed at the time of diagnosis (2). Because metastases remain a major problem in cancer treatment, many efforts were made to identify the molecular pathways regu-lating target genes that promote metastasis formation. The canon-ical wingless-type MMTV integration site family (WNT)/catenin b1 (CTNNB1; also known as b-catenin) signaling pathway is deregulated in about 90 % of colon tumors leading to constitutively active expression of target genes (3). One major target that i