摘要
The ultimate goal of cancer genetics is to exploit molecular changes in a cancer to design tumor specific therapies.Ma et al.in their recent paper in Cell Research used an elegant strategy,a CRISPR-Cas9 synthetic lethal knockout screen,to identify vulnerabilities in MEN1 deficient tu-mor cells in cell culture.They then successfully translated these results into the development of candidate gene targets for possible drug ther-apy.MEN1 deficiency occurs in sporadic neuroendocrine tumors,and germline mutations in the gene are the basis for cancer predisposition in the human multiple endocrine neoplasia(MEN1)syndrome 1,2.Such pa-tients are at high risk for the development of a variety of neuroendocrine neoplasms,including pancreatic neuroendocrine carcinomas,which are often not amenable for curative surgical resection and account for the mortality of MEN1 patients 3.
