Application of CRISPR-Cas 9 system in cancer therapy

Abstract

There are several gene editing technologies under the background of that time, such as ZFN and TALEN which are hard to use and have high cost. On the contrary, the efficiency and accuracy of CRISPR-Cas system has attracted the attention of scientists. CRISPR is a Short palindromic repeat sequence, and it is widespread in many prokaryotes. The first CRISPR was cloned in E. coli by scientists in 1987, and several other sequences were subsequently cloned. The Cas is a nuclease, then two of them cooperate to become the CRISPR-Cas system. It is not only an acquired immune defense mechanism of prokaryotes against virus, but also a tool for gene editing. As an emerging gene editing technology in recent years, CRISPR-Cas9 technology has been widely applied to the treatment of a variety of diseases. This review focused on the application of this technology in cancer. This review systematically introduced the working principle and immune mechanism of CRISPR-Cas9 and compared CRISPR-Cas9 technology with two previous generations of gene-editing technology, current application of CRISPR-Cas9 in cancer treatment, elaborating it with relevant examples, and finally pointed out the challenges of CRISPR-Cas9 in cancer treatment, looking forward to the development of this technology in the future. The purpose of the paper is to introduce and popularize CRISPR-Cas9 technology, and to provide a direction for future cancer treatment.