Cancer is frequently considered to be a disease of the cell cycle. As such, it is not surprising that the deregulation of the cell cycle is one of the most frequent alterations during tumor development. Cell cycle progression is a highly-ordered and tightly-regulated process that involves multiple checkpoints that assess extracellular growth signals, cell size, and DNA integrity. Cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs) and their cyclin partners are positive regulators of accelerators that induce cell cycle progression; whereas, cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitors (CKIs) that act as brakes to stop cell cycle progression in response to regulatory signals are important negative regulators. Cancer originates from the abnormal expression of activation of positive regulators and functional suppression of negative regulators. Therefore, understanding the molecular mechanisms of the deregulation of cell cycle progression in cancer can provide important insights into how normal cells become tumorigenic, as well as how cancer treatment strategies can be designed.