Just the essentials

A team led by University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center President Ronald DePinho has developed a method of scouring cancer genome databases for new targets by looking for what he calls "the ghosts of tumor suppressor genes."

The concept is a labyrinth of multiple negatives: by identifying genes with "synthetic essential" relationships to tumor suppressors, the idea is to find targets whose inhibition could cancel out the cancer-driving effects of tumor suppressor deficiency...