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An Achilles' heel for breast cancer?

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Two recent reports describe potentially novel therapeutic approaches for treating tumors arising from mutations in the tumor suppressor genes BRCA1 and BRCA2. These studies support the idea that selective killing of tumor cells can be achieved by targeting a specific DNA repair pathway on which an individual tumor type has become dependent.

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Figure 1: Mammalian PARPs and SSBR.
Figure 2: A model for specific killing of BRCA-defective cells by PARP inhibitors.

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Caldecott, K., Chalmers, A. An Achilles' heel for breast cancer?. Nat Struct Mol Biol 12, 387–388 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nsmb0505-387

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