I didn’t read the article fully but the parts of those two papers that are public and available to me (see Extended data Fig.4 comment at the bottom of the first paper), those do not talk about turning off a gene that encodes MTDH.

The paper is talking about a compound (two compound candidates) that inhibit binding of two proteins: AEG-1 (encoded by MTDH) and SND1, those compounds do that by binding to either AEG-1’s or SND1’s site where otherwise SND or AEG-1 would have bind, and they likely do this with stronger bond than SND1 and AEG1 would have had.

So in short, this compound does not leave you without some vital protein but disrupt formation of some bonds with SND1 protein.