New tools for functional mammalian

Abstract

Knowledge of the function of individual genes that encode components of cellsignalling pathways is crucial to our understanding of normal growth control and its deregulation in cancer, but we have functional information for only ~15% of human genes at present. Several new technologies have recently become available to identify gene function in mammalian cells using high-throughput genetic screens. These new tools will make it possible to identify new and innovative classes of anticancer drugs, including those that show synthetic lethal interactions with cancer-specific mutations.