To verify the synergistic effect of the synthetically lethal genes PLK1 and ROCK, we evaluated a panel of cell lines from lung, colon and pancreatic cancers in which a KRAS mutation is the predominant oncogenic alteration3, as well as four normal human cell lines (fibroblasts/epithelial cells; Supplementary Table 2). The gene discussed is KRAS; the disease is familial pancreatic carcinoma.