NF-B is an inducible transcriptional factor for the expression of multiple genes involved in immunoinflammatory responses, cell proliferation, and survival, thus playing crucial roles in the pathogenesis of many diseases, including cancer, leukemia, and autoimmune diseases (1-4). NF-B primarily exists as the heterodimer consisting of p65 and p50 in the cytoplasm and is sequestered by binding to its inhibitory protein IB (5). Upon signaling, such as by tumor necrosis factor ␣ (TNF␣), IB is phosphorylated and is followed by proteasomemediated degradation, which liberates NF-B to the nucleus thereby activating the target genes.PKA exists in the cytoplasm as an inactivated tetramer holoenzyme composed of dimer catalytic subunits and dimer regulatory subunits, which dissociate upon elevation of cAMP (6 -10). PKAc is also predominantly involved in the IB-NF-B complex in the cytoplasm, and IB sequesters PKAc by masking its catalytic domain (11). Following a variety of extracellular stimuli such as TNF␣, IB is phosphorylated by IKK 2 and degraded by the 26 S proteasome (12, 13). As a consequence, the p65/p50 heterodimer complex is liberated, and the catalytic center of PKAc is exposed, enabling activated PKAc to phosphorylate p65 at 15). This PKA-dependent phosphorylation of p65 facilitates the recruitment of transcription coactivator CBP and DNA binding activity of p65; therefore, activation of PKA augments NF-B-dependent gene expression, and PKAc signaling is considered to up-regulate . With regard to the role of PKAc in NF-B signaling, some claimed that cAMP-dependent PKA activation down-regulated NF-B-dependent transcription by changing its DNA binding ability (18,19), modifying the transactivation domain of p65 (20), or blocking the degradation of IB proteins (21,22).In our previous report, we identified AKIP1 as a novel p65-interacting protein (23). AKIP1 was initially found in breast cancer cells (24) in which it facilitated the nuclear translocation of PKAc (25). We found that AKIP1 appears to serve as a molecular bridge between p65 and PKAc, promoting their interaction and subsequent p65 phosphorylation at Ser-276, thus enhancing NF-B signaling (23). Because NF-B is constitutively activated in some breast cancer cells, endowing them with resistance to apoptosis (26 -28), we hypothesized that the effect of PKA in NF-B cascade is associated with AKIP1 and could be modulated by AKIP1 in a cell type-dependent fashion.In this study, we further investigate the role of PKA in regulating NF-B-dependent transcription in various cell lines with different expression levels of endogenous AKIP1. We provide evidence that in minimal AKIP1-expressing cell lines, elevation of cAMP decreased p65-PKA binding and p65 phosphorylation at Ser-276, which eventually leads to down-regulation of the NF-B-dependent transcription. In contrast, in breast cancer cell lines MDA-MB231 and MCF7 with high AKIP1 expression, the PKA-activating agents increased p65-PKA binding and its phosphorylation and up-regulated the NF-B-dependent transcriptio...