2月5日,来自军事医学科学院放射与辐射医学院研究所、第四军医大学西京医院、日本京都大学和华中农业大学兽医学院等处的研究人员,在Nature旗下子刊《Gene Therapy》发表一项最新研究成果,题为“Harnessing the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated Cas9 system to disrupt the hepatitis B virus”。 在这项研究中,研究人员探讨了靶定HBV抗原(HBsAg)编码区的CRISPR/CRISPR相关Cas9系统,在细胞培养系统和活体动物体内的效果。结果表明,CRISPR/Cas9可在体内和体外抑制HBV复制和表达,可能是HBV感染一种新的治疗策略。
Harnessing the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated Cas9 system to disrupt the hepatitis B virus
doi:10.1038/gt.2015.2
The current therapies to treat hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection are limited. Recently, clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR) systems, originally identified in bacteria and archaea, have been found to consist of an RNA-based adaptive immune system that degrades complimentary sequences of invading plasmids and viruses. Here, we studied the effects of the CRISPR/CRISPR-associated Cas9 system that was targeted to the surface antigen (HBsAg)-encoding region of HBV, both in a cell culture system and in vivo. The HBsAg levels in the media of the cells and in the sera of mice were analyzed by a quantitative enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The HBV DNA levels were assessed by quantitative PCR and HBsAg expression in mouse livers was assessed by an immunohistochemical assay. The amount of HBsAg secreted in the cell culture and mouse serum was reduced by CRISPR/Cas9 treatment. Immunohistochemistry analyses showed almost no HBsAg-positive cells in the liver tissue of CRISPR/Cas9-S1+X3-treated mice. The CRISPR/Cas9 system efficiently produced mutations in HBV DNA. Thus, CRISPR/Cas9 inhibits HBV replication and expression in vitro and in vivo and may constitute a new therapeutic strategy for HBV infection.