Syntaxin 18 regulates the DNA damage response and epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition to promote radiation resistance of lung cancer

Radiotherapy is an important modality in lung cancer treatment. Despite advances in treatment planning and dose delivery, patient benefit is still limited by in-field relapse and metastatic recurrence. In an unbiased functional genetic screen for radiosensitization targets in lung cancer we identified syntaxin 18 (STX18), a protein involved in retrograde vesicular transport between the Golgi apparatus and endoplasmic reticulum, as mediator of radioresistance. In order to identify possible targets of STX18, we performed mRNA sequencing in A549 cells with and without shRNA-mediated knockdown of STX18 (A549 shSTX18 and A549 shScr, respectively), which were mock irradiated or irradiated with 10 Gy and analyzed after 24h.