Figure 2.

Targeting LOH in tumors for cancer treatment. When a cancer cell undergoes loss of heterozygosity of non-driver genes (A), further loss or inhibition of a specific allele (B) still retained in the tumor should not be tolerated, whereas normal cells will be able to survive relying solely on the retained allele. Treatment with an agent (purple dots) that is either a selective inhibitor of protein product B or a cytotoxic substrate metabolized by A but not B will result in selective killing of the tumor cells. Thus, approaches focusing on non-driver genes represent an alternative target class that merits further exploration. Here, orange and green regions represent either of two homologous chromosomes and ’X’ indicates the selective kill of cancer cells retaining only allele B.