Abstract

Background: Silencing of two or more complementary signaling pathways can lead to cell death, while loss of any single genetic function does not show a severe phnotype, this kind of inter action is coined as “synthetic lethality”. Nowadays, synthetic lethality has become a widely used anti-cancer strategy.

Method: We reviewed the synthetic lethal interactions exploited in anticancer therapies before 2016.

Conclusion: Synthetic lethality is a well proved anticancer strategy and more synthetic lethal interactions is being translated into clinical cancer therapies.

Keywords: Synthetic lethality, targeted therapy, PARP inhibitors, drug resistance, cancer therapy, signaling pathways.