A cornerstone of precision medicine may be on shaky ground

Many newfangled cancer drugs these days, in one way or another, target the genes purportedly responsible for a tumor’s growth. But a new study turns this entire concept on its head, STAT’s Sharon Begley writes.

Using CRISPR to knock out the genes thought responsible for certain cancers had, well, zero effect on curbing the cancer’s growth. That is, the cancer cells were able to carry on unabated — even if they were suddenly deprived access to the proteins once thought essential to their growth.

“Our data suggest that multiple genes targeted in cancer clinical trials are, in fact, fully dispensable for cancer cell growth,” the scientists write in Science Translational Medicine.