MELK and cancer: However, as MELK is so frequently overexpressed in human cancer (Nakano et al. 2008; Kuner et al. 2013; Wang et al. 2014; Speers et al. 2016; Xia et al. 2016; Chen et al. 2020), finding synthetic lethal interactions with MELK overexpression would still provide a powerful means to treat cancers that overexpress MELK.