Considering the extremely low mRNA expression of PKCβ (for the real-time PCR analysis, the Ct values for PKCβ were over 40 cycles in the 5637, T24 and TCC-SUP cell lines, Fig. 1A) in the bladder cancer cell lines, we concluded that PKCα played the dominant role in PMA-induced NF-κB activation. The gene discussed is NFKB1; the disease is urinary bladder cancer.