PRKAA1 and cancer: Considerable amount of research has demonstrated that AMPK plays negative effects on the growth of cancer cells.20, 27 It has been shown that AMPK activators including metformin, AICAR, berberine, A769962 and aspirin suppress the growth of cancer cells in vitro and in vivo, which can be mimicked by the active mutant of AMPKα subunit or prevented by its dominant negative mutant.