Can gene editing drive out HIV and hepatitis viruses from inside cells?
By Cormac Sheridan,
Nature Biotechnology
| 10. 30. 2023
A gene-editing therapy based on CRISPR–Cas9 designed to eliminate HIV-1 infection has rekindled hopes among scientists that it may be possible to eradicate the virus and cure the infection. In an in vivo editing study in non-human primates conducted by scientists from Temple University and Excision BioTherapeutics, a single dose of a CRIPSR therapy excised the simian immunodeficiency virus (closely related to HIV-1) from the DNA of infected animals with no observable off-target effects or other safety problems. The equivalent human therapy, EBT-101, is undergoing a phase 1/2 clinical trial in people infected with HIV-1.
This CRISPR therapy is part of a wave of sophisticated genetic approaches targeting difficult-to-treat chronic infections (Table 1). In addition to gene editing, therapies, including antisense oligonucleotides, short interfering RNA (siRNA), gene therapy, therapeutic vaccines and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapies, are being brought to bear on a range of pathogens, but most prominently on HIV-1 and chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection.
Once a person is infected and after the acute stage resolves, these viruses can persist indefinitely — in CD4 T...
Related Articles
By Fyodor Urnov, Time | 08.12.2024
After a lifetime in the field of epigenetics, and nearly 20 years after my colleagues and I coined the term “genome editing,” I will be the first to admit that describing the “epigenome”—a marvelous biological process that guides...
By Azeen Ghorayshi and Sarah Kliff, The New York Times | 08.12.2024
An emerging movement against in vitro fertilization is driving some doctors and patients in red states to move or destroy frozen embryos.
The embryo migration is most striking in Alabama, where the State Supreme Court ruled in February that embryos...
By Gemma Conroy, Nature | 06.27.2024
Image by Robina Weermeijer from Unsplash
A molecular-editing tool that’s small enough to be delivered to the brain shuts down the production of proteins that cause prion diseases, a rare but deadly group of neurodegenerative disorders.
The system — known...
By Staff, AP-NORC | 07.12.2024
Image by Dr. Jayesh Amin from Wikimedia Commons licensed under CC by-SA 3.0
Most adults support protecting access to in vitro fertilization, or IVF, a type of fertility treatment where eggs are combined with sperm outside the body in a...