With the CRISPR system, researchers can diagnose, detect, and potentially treat a host of diseases within the body using gene editing.

CRISPR systems leverage a key feature of a bacterial defense system — Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats — to target and edit specific stretches of genetic code, enabling scientists to tailor DNA within living cells and organisms much more easily than before.

MIT scientists are already using CRISPR systems to build sensitive tools for diagnosing human diseases and to accelerate the pace of research by quickly creating cell and animal models. In the future, CRISPR may make it possible to correct mutations in order to treat genetic causes of disease.

Using nature's tools to edit our genome. MIT scientists contribute to one of the century's most profound biological discoveries. Directed by Sarah Klein & Tom Mason of Redglass Pictures for the MIT School of Science. 2020.

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New pathway for lung cancer treatment

Researchers in the Jacks lab used CRISPR to screen small cell lung cancer cell lines for genes that already have drugs targeting them, or that are likely to be druggable, in order to find therapeutic targets that can be tested more quickly and easily in a clinical setting.

MIT News →
“By developing this new enzyme and combining it with the programmability and precision of CRISPR, we were able to fill a critical gap in the toolbox.”

MIT News

New CRISPR platform expands RNA editing capabilities

‘Jumping genes’ could help CRISPR replace disease-causing DNA, study finds

Purple background with orange worm-like shapes

The jumping-gene version of CRISPR is most likely to [be] best [over] the classic version when curing a genetic disease requires making a gene function normally by replacing its misspelled DNA “letters.” CRISPR tries to do that by cutting out the mutation (like Word snipping out fi from orthografi) and offering up the correct letters (phy).

Read it at STAT →

Introducing genetic mutations with CRISPR offers a fast and accurate way to simulate disease.

Image of a tumor created by delivering RNA encapsulated in lipid nanoparticles to the colon. The RNA can activate or delete specific genes, leading to tumor growth.

Using the CRISPR gene-editing system, researchers have shown in mice that they can generate colon tumors that closely resemble human tumors. This advance should help scientists learn more about how the disease progresses and allow them to test new therapies.

Read it at MIT News →

The CRISPR-Cas9 method for genome editing is a powerful technology with many applications in biomedical research, including the potential to treat human genetic disease.

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But the biggest impact CRISPR will have won’t be curing genetic diseases. It’s much larger: advances we can’t even imagine.

CRISPR will change lives, but not only through genetic engineering

CRISPR isn’t just for gene editing anymore

Scientists have unveiled a rapid, inexpensive, highly sensitive CRISPR-based diagnostic tool called SHERLOCK. Now, a strip of paper can indicate presence of pathogens, tumor DNA, or any genetic signature of interest with 100-fold greater sensitivity, the ability to detect multiple targets at once, and other new features that further enhance SHERLOCK's power.

Read it at Gizmodo →

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