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Abstract of the talk :
We have an increasingly detailed description of the molecular alterations that occur across the diversity of human cancer genomes. An important and challenging next step is to convert this wealth of information into new therapeutic hypothesises to guide patient care. My laboratory integrates cancer genomics, experimental functional genomics and mechanistic studies to elucidate vulnerabilities operative in cancer cells. These efforts are part of our Cancer Dependency Map (DepMap) initiative which aims to assign a dependency to every cancer cell in a patient and which could be exploited to develop new therapies (https://depmap.sanger.ac.uk/).
In my presentation, I will focus on our recent efforts performing genome-wide CRISPR-Cas9 screens across hundreds of cancer cell lines to systematically identify dependencies and new oncology drug targets. This has led to the identification of Werner syndrome helicase as a new candidate synthetic-lethal target in microsatellite unstable tumours.