WRN and cancer: Notably, the exacerbated fork instability in BRCA2-mutated cells upon acute inhibition of WRN helicase by NSC617145 (Median IdU/CldU = 0.3831) was found to be markedly greater (Fig. 2b) than genetic depletion of WRN altogether (Median IdU/CldU = 0.6126) (Fig. 2a), suggesting that WRN helicase inhibition triggers unrestrained degradation of stalled forks in BRCA2-deficient human cancer cells.