FANCA-dependent FEN1 recruitment suppresses transcription-replication conflicts and PARPi sensitivity
Synthetic lethality (SL) underlies the success of PARP1 inhibitors (PARPi) in treating homologous recombination (HR) deficient cancers, yet their broader applicability beyond HR-deficiency remains poorly defined. Here, we performed an in vivo CRISPR screen that identifies FANCA deficiency as a driver of tumor progression and PARPi SL, validated across diverse human cancer models. Notably, FANCA loss does not impair HR but instead disrupts FEN1 recruitment to replication forks, leading to defective Okazaki fragment maturation, lagging-strand single-strand DNA gap accumulation, and RPA exhaustion upon PARPi treatment. Additionally, FANCA loss in oncogene-expressing cells promotes transcription replication conflict (TRC) accumulation selectively on the lagging strand and sensitizes HR-proficient cells to PARPi, a phenotype reversible by RNA polymerase II inhibition or RNase H overexpression. Together, these findings identify FANCA deficiency as a context-specific PARPi vulnerability and establish FANCA as a key suppressor of TRCs required for genomic stability under oncogenic replication stress.