Cancer gene therapy

CRISPR cured cervical cancer in mice

Sergey Kolenov, Hi-tech+

The cause of the vast majority of cases of cervical cancer is the human papillomavirus (HPV). Once in the cell, the infection is embedded in the DNA and begins to produce its own proteins. Two of them, E6 and E7, suppress the protective mechanisms of the cell and increase the risk of its transformation into cancer.

Thus, only two genes encoding these proteins are responsible for the development of a dangerous disease. This means that, in theory, they can simply be cut out of the genome or their work can be silenced, preventing the threat. Researchers from Griffith University in Australia, whose work is described in the Gene-editing breakthrough in battle against cancer press release, decided to test this idea in practice. To do this, they used CRISPR, the most popular gene editing tool.

Usually CRISPR is used to find a certain gene, cut it out and replace it with another one. However, in this case, the particles did not cut out the E6 and E7 genes, but damaged them by introducing additional meaningless DNA. As a result, ribosomes cannot read oncogenes and do not produce the corresponding proteins, which leads to the death of the tumor.

The method was tested on mice with implanted human cervical cancer cells.

The results were impressive: the tumors in the treated individuals completely disappeared, all of them survived. And no side effects.

Over the next five years, the team intends to conduct clinical trials in humans. There are also plans to try the technique for other types of cancer.

Article by Jubair et al. Systematic Delivery of CRISPR/Cas9 Targeting HPV Oncogenes Is Effective at Eliminating Established Tumors published in the journal Molecular Therapy – VM.

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