Haojie Jin and colleagues performed a CRISPR knockout screen with help from ScreeninC. By screening a library of gRNAs targeting 503 human kinases, Haojie and colleagues identified a synthetic lethal interaction between inhibition of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) the multi-kinase inhibitor lenvatinib in liver cancer. The authors go on to show that patients with advanced liver cancer that did not respond to lenvatinib, showed clinical responses to a combination of lenvatinib and EGFR inhibitor gefitinib.

The results of this study have been published in Nature.