Cancer Letters

Cancer Letters

Volume 476, 28 April 2020, Pages 120-128
Cancer Letters

Mini-review
Synthetic lethality: A promising therapeutic strategy for hepatocellular carcinoma

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.canlet.2020.02.016Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open access

Highlights

  • Despite considerable advances in the treatment of HCC, the prognosis for HCC remains poor.

  • The synthetic lethal interactions are found in a variety of cancers.

  • Chemical screening, RNAi, CRISPR and computational approaches greatly expand the synthetic lethal libraries.

  • Synthetic lethality can be applied to achieve the personalized treatment of HCC.

Abstract

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the main cause of liver cancer-related death, is one of the main cancers in terms of incidence and mortality. However, HCC is difficult to target and develops strong drug resistance. Therefore, a new treatment strategy is urgently needed. The clinical application of the concept of synthetic lethality in recent years provides a new therapeutic direction for the accurate treatment of HCC. Here, we introduce the concept of synthetic lethality, the screening used to study synthetic lethality, and the identified and potential genetic interactions that induce synthetic lethality in HCC. In addition, we propose opportunities and challenges for translating synthetic lethal interactions to the clinical treatment of HCC.

Keywords

Hepatocellular carcinoma
Synthetic lethality
Screening technology
Genetic interactions

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1

Linsong Tang and Ronggao Chen contributed equally to this review.