CRISPR Cas9 in Pancreatic Cancer Research.

Hai Yang,Christian Pilarsky,Peter Bailey

doi:10.3389/fcell.2019.00239

Hai Yang, Christian Pilarsky + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fcell.2019.00239

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Abstract

Pancreatic cancer is now becoming a common cause of cancer death with no significant change in patient survival over the last 10 years. The main treatment options for pancreatic cancer patients are surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy, but there is now considerable effort to develop new and effective treatments. In recent years, CRISPR/Cas9 technology has emerged as a powerful gene editing tool with promise, not only as an important research methodology, but also as a new and effective method for targeted therapy. In this review, we summarize current advances in CRISPR/Cas9 technology and its application to pancreatic cancer research, and importantly as a means of selectively targeting key drivers of pancreatic cancer.

Highlights

According to the data provided by the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR), pancreatic cancer is the 12th most common cancer with the 5th worst prognosis in the United States
CRISPR repetitive sequences were first observed by Ishino et al (1987), with subsequent work performed by Jinek et al (2012) proving that an endonuclease can be directed to cleave target DNA by a two-RNA structure
The insertion of CRISPR-Cas in the genomes of bacteria infected with virus suggested that CRISPR-Cas may provide resistance against phages and that resistance to infection might be enhanced or decreased by inserting or deleting spacer-phage sequence

Summary

INTRODUCTION

According to the data provided by the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR), pancreatic cancer is the 12th most common cancer with the 5th worst prognosis in the United States. It is estimated that there will be 56,770 new cases of pancreatic cancer and 45,750 pancreatic cancer-related deaths in the United States in 2019. Radiation therapy and chemotherapy are still the main treatment options for pancreatic cancer, but there is considerable effort in identifying better treatment strategies for pancreatic cancer, such as targeted therapy, immune therapy and potentially CRISPR/Cas directed gene therapy. Compared to the other gene-editing technologies, such as meganucleases (MNs), zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs) and transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs), CRISPR/Cas technology has lower cost, higher efficiency and is less complex in its application (Osborn et al, 2016)

BACKGROUND

LIMITATIONS

CONCLUSION AND OUTLOOK