{"entity":{"id":"idea-bio2-dormancy-selective-screen","kind":"idea","name":"A drug screen that only rewards killing sleeping cancer cells","aka":[],"tldr":"Nearly all cancer drugs are found by killing fast-growing cells. Sleeping cells survive them. A screen designed around dormant cells would find a different class of drug.","summary":"Dormant disseminated tumour cells are non-cycling, so proliferation-based screens are blind to them. Induced-dormancy models exist (serum-starved and matrix-confined cells, bone-marrow-niche co-cultures, three-dimensional dormancy assays) and small screens have already flagged cardiac glycosides, autophagy inhibitors and specific metabolic dependencies. Nobody has run a million-compound campaign with dormancy-selective killing as the primary readout.","asOf":"2026-09-08","links":[{"label":"Bottleneck evidence (Dormant cells and minimal residual disease): Tie et al., ctDNA analysis guiding adjuvant therapy in stage II colon cancer (NEJM 2022)","url":"https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2200075"}],"tags":[],"related":["depmap","drugbank-chembl"],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":["organoids","functional-drug-testing","crispr-screens"],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":["b-dormancy-mrd","b-preclinical-models","b-undruggable-targets"],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"hypothesis":"A dormancy-selective screen yields compounds that kill non-cycling disseminated tumour cells at least ten times more potently than cycling cells, a selectivity profile absent from current oncology libraries.","rationale":"Screening paradigm determines drug class: kinase inhibitors dominate because proliferation assays reward them. Anti-persister screening in bacteriology produced genuinely new antibiotic chemistry by the same logic.","test":"Build and openly publish a validated dormancy assay pair (dormant versus cycling isogenic cells), screen an approved-drug library plus 100,000 diverse compounds, and report all hit and miss data.","maturity":"preclinical-evidence","actor":"research","cost":"medium","horizonYears":6},"route":"/ideas/idea-bio2-dormancy-selective-screen/","neighbours":{"collection":[{"id":"depmap","kind":"collection","name":"DepMap (Cancer Dependency Map)","route":"/collections/depmap/"},{"id":"drugbank-chembl","kind":"collection","name":"DrugBank & ChEMBL","route":"/collections/drugbank-chembl/"}],"technology":[{"id":"crispr-screens","kind":"technology","name":"CRISPR functional genomics","route":"/technologies/crispr-screens/"},{"id":"functional-drug-testing","kind":"technology","name":"Functional (ex vivo) drug testing","route":"/technologies/functional-drug-testing/"},{"id":"organoids","kind":"technology","name":"Patient-derived organoids","route":"/technologies/organoids/"}],"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-dormancy-mrd","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Dormant cells and minimal residual disease","route":"/bottlenecks/b-dormancy-mrd/"},{"id":"b-preclinical-models","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Lab models that fail to predict what happens in patients","route":"/bottlenecks/b-preclinical-models/"},{"id":"b-undruggable-targets","kind":"bottleneck","name":"The undruggable drivers","route":"/bottlenecks/b-undruggable-targets/"}]}}