Synthetic Lethality: From PARP Inhibitors to a New Generation of Targeted Cancer Therapies
This comprehensive review maps the landscape of synthetic lethal drug discovery, from CRISPR-based high-throughput screens to clinical translation. Building on the success of PARP inhibitors in BRCA-mutant cancers, new agents targeting DNA damage response, epigenetic, metabolic, and proliferative pathways are entering clinical development. The review highlights how predictive biomarker assays are co-evolving with these therapies to guide patient selection.
The original study
Synthetic lethal strategies for the development of cancer therapeutics.
- Authors
- Ngoi NYL, Gallo D, Torrado C, Nardo M, Durocher D, Yap TA
- Journal
- Nature reviews. Clinical oncology
- Type
- Journal Article, Review
- PMID
- 39627502
Original abstract
Synthetic lethality is a genetic phenomenon whereby the simultaneous presence of two different genetic alterations impairs cellular viability. Importantly, targeting synthetic lethal interactions offers potential therapeutic strategies for cancers with alterations in pathways that might otherwise be considered undruggable. High-throughput screening methods based on modern CRISPR-Cas9 technologies have emerged and become crucial for identifying novel synthetic lethal interactions with the potential for translation into biologically rational cancer therapeutic strategies as well as associated predictive biomarkers of response capable of guiding patient selection. Spurred by the clinical success of PARP inhibitors in patients with BRCA-mutant cancers, novel agents targeting multiple synthetic lethal interactions within DNA damage response pathways are in clinical development, and rational strategies targeting synthetic lethal interactions spanning alterations in epigenetic, metabolic and proliferative pathways have also emerged and are in late preclinical and/or early clinical testing. In this Review, we provide a comprehensive overview of established and emerging technologies for synthetic lethal drug discovery and development and discuss promising therapeutic strategies targeting such interactions.