AURKA and cancer: A previous study conducted by Wang and Simon used gene-expression profiling to select multiple candidates for synthetically lethal gene targets of p53.53 A series of kinase-encoding genes were found to be potential targets of p53-deficient tumors for new drug therapy, including polo-like kinase 1 (PLK1), cyclin-dependent kinase 16 (CDK16), receptor-like tyrosine kinase (RYK), aurora kinase A (AURKA), etc. Recently, increasing studies reported new synthetic lethal partners of p53 such as ATM, ATR, WEE1, CHK1, etc.,54–58 in various types of cancers (listed in Table 1).