TY - JOUR
T1 - Harnessing the potential of CRISPR/Cas in atherosclerosis
T2 - Disease modeling and therapeutic applications
AU - Siew, Wei Sheng
AU - Tang, Yin Quan
AU - Kong, Chee Kei
AU - Goh, Bey Hing
AU - Zacchigna, Serena
AU - Dua, Kamal
AU - Chellappan, Dinesh Kumar
AU - Duangjai, Acharaporn
AU - Saokaew, Surasak
AU - Phisalprapa, Pochamana
AU - Yap, Wei Hsum
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was funded by the Malaysian Ministry of Education Fundamental Research Grant Scheme, grant number FRGS/1/2019/SKK08/TAYLOR/02/2.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
PY - 2021/8
Y1 - 2021/8
N2 - Atherosclerosis represents one of the major causes of death globally. The high mortality rates and limitations of current therapeutic modalities have urged researchers to explore potential alternative therapies. The clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats‐associated protein 9 (CRISPR/Cas9) system is commonly deployed for investigating the genetic aspects of Ather-osclerosis. Besides, advances in CRISPR/Cas system has led to extensive options for researchers to study the pathogenesis of this disease. The recent discovery of Cas9 variants, such as dCas9, Cas9n, and xCas9 have been established for various applications, including single base editing, regulation of gene expression, live‐cell imaging, epigenetic modification, and genome landscaping. Mean-while, other Cas proteins, such as Cas12 and Cas13, are gaining popularity for their applications in nucleic acid detection and single‐base DNA/RNA modifications. To date, many studies have uti-lized the CRISPR/Cas9 system to generate disease models of atherosclerosis and identify potential molecular targets that are associated with atherosclerosis. These studies provided proof‐of‐concept evidence which have established the feasibility of implementing the CRISPR/Cas system in correct-ing disease‐causing alleles. The CRISPR/Cas system holds great potential to be developed as a targeted treatment for patients who are suffering from atherosclerosis. This review highlights the advances in CRISPR/Cas systems and their applications in establishing pathogenetic and therapeutic role of specific genes in atherosclerosis.
AB - Atherosclerosis represents one of the major causes of death globally. The high mortality rates and limitations of current therapeutic modalities have urged researchers to explore potential alternative therapies. The clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats‐associated protein 9 (CRISPR/Cas9) system is commonly deployed for investigating the genetic aspects of Ather-osclerosis. Besides, advances in CRISPR/Cas system has led to extensive options for researchers to study the pathogenesis of this disease. The recent discovery of Cas9 variants, such as dCas9, Cas9n, and xCas9 have been established for various applications, including single base editing, regulation of gene expression, live‐cell imaging, epigenetic modification, and genome landscaping. Mean-while, other Cas proteins, such as Cas12 and Cas13, are gaining popularity for their applications in nucleic acid detection and single‐base DNA/RNA modifications. To date, many studies have uti-lized the CRISPR/Cas9 system to generate disease models of atherosclerosis and identify potential molecular targets that are associated with atherosclerosis. These studies provided proof‐of‐concept evidence which have established the feasibility of implementing the CRISPR/Cas system in correct-ing disease‐causing alleles. The CRISPR/Cas system holds great potential to be developed as a targeted treatment for patients who are suffering from atherosclerosis. This review highlights the advances in CRISPR/Cas systems and their applications in establishing pathogenetic and therapeutic role of specific genes in atherosclerosis.
KW - Atherosclerosis
KW - CRISPR/Cas9
KW - Gene editing
KW - Gene therapy
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85111718859&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3390/ijms22168422
DO - 10.3390/ijms22168422
M3 - Review Article
C2 - 34445123
AN - SCOPUS:85111718859
SN - 1661-6596
VL - 22
JO - International Journal of Molecular Sciences
JF - International Journal of Molecular Sciences
IS - 16
M1 - 8422
ER -