Losers of Primary Cilia Gain the Benefit of survival

In this issue, Zhao and colleagues demonstrate that loss of primary cilia in medulloblastoma cells confers resistance to the Smoothened (SMO) inhibitor sonidegib. When treated with sonidegib, medulloblastoma cells lost their cilia and gained resistance. Surprisingly, loss of cilia is associated with recurrent mutations in ciliogenesis genes that are eventually able to drive drug resistance. These findings uncover a previously unknown mechanism of cancer cells in gaining a persister-like state against anticancer agents at the expense of losing primary cilia. (C) 2017 AACR.