Advances of CRISPR/Cas9 in cancer research and treatment

Abstract

Cancer is a disease that is very difficult to cure and a lot of people in the world die because of cancer. In the past, the treatments of cancer could only depend on radiotherapy, chemotherapy and surgery of removing tumors. But these ways have some weaknesses such as harming the health of the body and relapse of cancer. Whereas recently, completely curing cancer has become possible through the advances of gene-editing technologies. Due to its great effectiveness, simplicity of usage, and other advantages, the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/CRISPR-associated protein-9 (CRISPR/Cas9) system is a widely used gene editing technique today. But there are still many challenges that are applied to the body. For example, the CRISPR/Cas9 system has an off-target effect and there are no suitable carriers to deliver it to the area of the body. The resolution of these problems may be made possible by future developments in the CRISPR/Cas9 system. The use, restrictions, and potential uses of the CRISPR/Cas9 system in the treatment of cancer are examined in this research. In addition, this paper compares other treatments of cancer to summarize the advantages and disadvantages of different methods.