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The discovery of oncogenes and tumor-suppressor genes has profoundly influenced the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. The oncogene that is activated most often in human cancers is KRAS. Drugs predicated to diminish the effect of KRAS, however, have produced disappointing results.
Two groups at Harvard Medical School took a very different approach to finding possible therapeutic targets in cancers that are associated with activation of KRAS. They used RNA interference (JW Gen Med Dec 24 2004) to systematically shut down, one by one, thousands of genes for normal proteins in cells with KRAS activation and in cells of the same type without KRAS activation. The goal: to identify genes that, when shut down, led to the death of the cancer cell bu…