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Sawyers points to the identification of the two kinases as validation of the approaches taken by Elledge and Gilliland. With the dramatic clinical success of cancer drugs, such as Gleevec and dasatinib, which target rogue kinases, Sawyers says any screen that turns up new kinases is worthy of further investigation.

"The new mantra, quite simply, is that cancers bearing oncogenic mutations in a kinase are dependent on that kinase for growth and survival," writes Sawyers in Cell. "With rare exception, patients with such tumors have derived significant benefit (that is, their tumors shrink) when treated with an inhibitor of that mutant kinase. The probability of success in such patients is so high that drug discovery programs can (and should) be launched when a new kinase mutation is discovered in a subset of human cancers."

"Hopefully drugs that target non-mutant, but synthetic lethal kinases will be similarly effective," Sawyers added.

The concept of synthetic lethality which is part of the intellectual framework of these two studies -- has its roots in yeast genetics. Synthetic lethality is defined as a genetic interaction where the combination of mutations in two or more genes leads to cell death. For example, two different strains of yeast may each harbor a mutation that is not lethal on its own. But when both mutations are combined in a single strain of yeast, death occurs hence the name, synthetic lethality. "Synthetic lethality is actually co-lethality," said Elledge.

During the last few years cancer researchers have become increasingly interested in developing synthetic lethality screens as a tool for uncovering genetic dependencies in cancer cells. The rationale behind the st
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