Results in HEK293 cells indicated that k-mer-based transcriptome profiling can identify active targets that are both specific (PHGDH and IGFBP-2) and non-specific (XAGE 1E, CCND1, RBM11 and CYP4F22) for the targeted cancer, as well as targets that are relatively inactive (PHGDH and IGFBP-2) in unrelated cell lines. Here, PHGDH is linked to cancer.