To test whether the cancer-specific perturbation sensitivity can be targeted with a gene-specific strategy, we applied clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) interference (CRISPRi)55 to target the promoters of five proliferation genes (E2f3a, MYC, CCNE1, MCM4 and CDC25A), which were highly connected and correctly predicted to be upregulated in both polyps and adenocarcinoma (Extended Data Fig. 6a and Supplementary Table 2). This evidence concerns the gene CCNE1 and adenocarcinoma.