The focus of this AACR Special Conference is to bring together basic, translational, and clinical scientists working on targeting codependencies and other context-specific dependencies.

The concept of synthetic lethality is derived from classical genetics and has been widely explored in model organisms.

Recent advances in technology now permit similar types of studies to be performed in mammalian cells, and the demonstration that PARP inhibitors show clinical responses in breast and ovarian cancer patients that harbor BRCA1 mutations provides proof-of-principle evidence that targeting such codependencies represents a promising therapeutic strategy.