RNAi’s Future in Drug-Target Screening

A recent CRISPR study contradicted years of RNA interference research on a well-studied cancer drug target. But is it the last nail in the coffin for RNAi as a screening tool?

Written byCatherine Offord

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RNA interferenceWIKIMEDIA, RICHARD ROBINSON

When researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory set out to confirm cancer cells’ dependence on MELK, a gene coding for a protein kinase shown by countless RNA interference (RNAi) studies to be essential, they weren’t expecting anything unusual. But then they discovered that deleting MELK using gene editor CRISPR-Cas9 had no observable effect on cancer cells at all, turning previous research on its head.

“The study was carefully made—it was meticulous,” cancer researcher Alexey Terskikh of the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, who was not involved in the work, told The Scientist when the paper was published in eLife last month. It provides an example of “why people should use CRISPR for a more rigorous way to ask their question,” he added.

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Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
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