Mining mutations for protein kinase CK2 across several cancer types

While the death toll of cancer has declined worldwide, the incidence is at an all-time high. Protein Casein kinase II (CKII) is a protein serine/threonine kinase that is essential to many cellular and biological functions in the mammalian organism. CK2 works as a heterotetramer protein consisting of two kinase and two regulatory subunits. Mutations in CK2 genes that lead to increased CK2 activity are associated with several human cancer types. To further our understanding of CK2’s relationship with cancer, we set to create and analyze a mutational profile for CK2 genes using a publicly available ATCG dataset via cBioPortal. For this, a collection of genomic data from patients with different cancer types was pooled from cBioPortal, allowing singular analysis of CK2 genes throughout different cancer types. Additionally, Kaplan-Meier plots assessed the effect of overall alterations in each CK2 gene and combinations of them. We found amino acid residue mutational hotspots in diverse cancer types. We also found some correlation between overall CK2 gene mutation and cancer patient disease-free survival and disease progression. Although our analysis is limited in its scope and specifics, however, it begs further investigation into the role of CK2 mutations in human malignancies.2025-06-14T00:00:00