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CRISPRoffhttps://phys.org/news/2021-04-reversible-crispr-method-gene-underlying.html ....a lot like antisense in terms of it's "medicinal" use. Maybe Jon can weigh in. This is interesting and differs from antisense: The researchers chose a gene to silence in the stem cells, and then induced them to turn into nerve cells called neurons. When they looked for the same gene in the neurons, they discovered that it had remained silenced in 90 percent of the cells, revealing that cells retain a memory of epigenetic modifications made by the CRISPRoff system even as they change cell type.... Plus, having a reliable system to alter a cell's epigenetics could help researchers learn the mechanisms by which epigenetic modifications are passed down through cell divisions. "I think our tool really allows us to begin to study the mechanism of heritability, especially epigenetic heritability, which is a huge question in the biomedical sciences," Nuņez says. But as far as actual therapeutics goes, it's in the same ballpark we are in: "After testing the method in neurons, they were able to show that using CRISPRoff could be used to turn Tau expression down, although not entirely off. "What we showed is that this is a viable strategy for silencing Tau and preventing that protein from being expressed," Weissman says. "The question is, then, how do you deliver this to an adult? And would it really be enough to impact Alzheimer's? Those are big open questions, especially the latter." Even if CRISPRoff does not lead to Alzheimer's therapies, there are many other conditions it could potentially be applied to. And while delivery to specific tissues remains a challenge for gene editing technologies such as CRISPRoff, "we showed that you can deliver it transiently as a DNA or as an RNA, the same technology that's the basis of the Moderna and BioNTech coronavirus vaccine," Weissman says." (Which makes me wonder about Moderna. Haha.) |
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Msg # | Subject | Author | Recs | Date Posted |
14339 | Re: CRISPRoff | schmiggins | 1 | 4/11/2021 9:13:29 PM |