A group of researchers from Dresden’s National Center for Tumor Disease (NCT)…and the German Consortium for Translational Cancer Research (DKTK)…have found a way to use CRISPR-Cas9 to identify and cut out the particular cancer genes that advance mutations.
“Mutations in cancer cells are identified at increasing speed through next generation sequencing, but we mostly do not know, which of these mutations are actually driving the disease and which ones are rather benign,” leading researcher Frank Buchholz said….
Of the more than 500,000 identified cancer mutations, the researchers were able to confirm that more than 80% can be cleaved using CRISPR-Cas9 scissors.
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The researchers were able to identify and successfully cleave driver cells in one common cancer mutation, without affecting the healthy genes, and identify which were cancer driver mutations.
According to Buchholz, “This is an important advance…This is currently a bottleneck in cancer research. Because each cancer shows a specific combination of many mutations, this scientific approach could improve cancer diagnostics as mutations that promote cancer growth could be specifically identified.”
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: Cutting Out Cancer: CRISPR Gene Editing Could Make Cancer Mutations Inactive
