Sarcomas have a below-average cancer survival rate, but finding new targets will help improve survivability. Simone Hettmer and colleagues in the lab of ASCB member Amy Wagner at Harvard University, as well as collaborators at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, University Hospital Berlin, University of Freiburg, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, University of Maryland, Tufts University Veterinary School, and Indiana University, sought to discover a new approach for treating sarcomas. In a genomic screen of mouse sarcomas, they found that silencing asparagine synthetase, an amidotransferase that converts aspartate into the amino acid asparagine, inhibited sarcoma growth in mice. Using inhibitor amino sulfoximine 5 (AS5) or asparaginase they were also able to reduce human sarcoma growth in vitro. Published in eLife.