Gemcitabine Resistance in pancreatic cancer. Genome-wide CRISPR screen identifies DCK and CCNL1 as genes that contribute to gemcitabine resistance in pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most lethal cancers. Although complete surgical resection is the on-ly curative treatment for pancreatic cancer, late diagnosis usually happens and causes the patients to lose the chance for surgery treatment. Therefore, most patients receive chemotherapy to reduce the tumor burden. Gemcitabine was the main chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer for over a dec-ade, however, chemoresistance is one of the critical issues and significant challenges that affect the efficacy of chemotherapy. In this study, we applied genome-wide CRISPR-Cas9 loss-of-function screening with gemcitabine treatment to identify DCK and CCNL1 as genes that contribute to gemcitabine resistance in pancreatic cancer and explored the mechanism between CCNL1 and gemcitabine resistance.