Figure 2. PTEN deficiency sensitizes tumour cells to agents that target HR.

A, B. PTEN deficiency sensitizes cells to drug-like PARP inhibitors. Survival curves for HCT116 cells exposed to the PARP inhibitors KU0058948 (Farmer et al, 2005) or KU0059436 (Evers et al, 2008; Fong et al, 2008). Cells were plated in six-well plates and treated for 15 days, after which SFs were estimated. For both PARP inhibitors, PTEN^−/− SFs were significantly different to both PTEN^+/+ and PTEN^+/− cells (p<0.05 two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA)). No other comparisons returned significant p values.

C. PTEN deficiency sensitizes cells to cisplatin (p<0.05 PTEN^−/− lines versus PTEN^+/+ cells, two-way ANOVA).

D. PTEN deficiency does not confer sensitization to taxol.