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.

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The potent ability of CRISPR/Cas9 system to inhibit the expression of targeted gene is being exploited as a new class of therapeutics for a variety of diseases. However, the efficient and safe delivery of CRISPR/Cas9 into specific cell populations is still the principal challenge in the clinical development of CRISPR/Cas9 therapeutics.In this study, a flexible aptamer-liposome-CRISPR/Cas9 chimera was designed to combine efficient delivery and increased flexibility. Our chimera incorporated an RNA aptamer that specifically binds prostate cancer cells expressing the prostatespecific membrane antigen as a ligand. Cationic liposomes were linked to aptamers by the post-insertion method and were used to deliver therapeutic CRISPR/Cas9 that target the survival gene, polo-like kinase 1, in tumor cells. We demonstrate that the aptamer-liposome-CRISPR/Cas9 chimeras had a significant cell-type binding specificity and a remarkable gene silencing effect in vitro. Furthermore, silencing promoted a conspicuous regression of prostate cancer in vivo. Importantly, the approach described here provides a universal means of cell type-specific CRISPR/ Cas9 delivery, which is a critical goal for the widespread therapeutic applicability of CRISPR/Cas9 or other nucleic acid drugs.

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PURPOSE: Human papillomavirus (HPV) type 16 is one of the major etiologic factors of cervical cancer. Our study aims to investigate the potentiality of the antiviral clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated Cas9 system (CRISPR/Cas9) targeting the E6 and E7 oncogenes of HPV16 as a potential chemosensitizer of cisplatin (cis-diaminedichloroplatinum II; CDDP) for cervical cancer. METHODS: Specifically, the therapeutic efficacy of combination of CDDP and HPV16 E6 + E7-CRISPR/Cas9 was assessed in cervical cancer cells and cervical cancer xenograft models. RESULTS: In vitro experiments showed that long-term exposure of SiHa cells to the HPV16 E6 + E7-CRISPR/Cas9 induced apoptosis, and its pro-apoptosis effect became more obvious when combined with CDDP. In vivo study found the efficacy of the combination of HPV16 E6 + E7-CRISPR/Cas9 and CDDP were superior to either of the treatments in term of apoptosis induction and metastasis inhibition. CONCLUSION: Collectively, our results suggested that HPV16 E6 + E7-CRISPR/Cas9 could be an effective sensitizer of CDDP chemotherapy in cervical cancer.

Abstract. Ovarian cancer (OC) is the third most common type of gynecological cancer. Measurements of human epididymis protein 4 (HE4) levels have been suggested for improving the specificity of the laboratory identification of OC. For this meta-analysis, the Medline, Embase and Cochrane databases were searched to identify relevant studies. All the included studies for diagnostic performance were combined with sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio, negative likelihood ratio, diagnostic odds ratios (DORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs), summary receiver operating characteristic (SROC) curves and areas under the SROC curves (AUC). A total of 25 studies including 4,729 patients were identified as eligible for inclusion in the final analysis. The pooled sensitivities and respective 95% CIs for HE4 and carbohydrate antigen 125 (CA125) were 0.74 (0.72-0.76) and 0.74 (0.72-0.76), respectively. The pooled specificities and respective 95% CIs for HE4 and CA125 were 0.90 (0.89-0.91) and 0.83 (0.81-0.84), respectively. The summary DORs and 95% CIs for HE4 and CA125 were 43.35 (29.13-64.51) and 17.06 (10.97-26.51), respectively and the AUCs for HE4 and CA125 were 0.8915 and 0.8538, respectively. In total, 9 studies investigated the diagnostic accuracy of HE4 combined with CA125 for the diagnosis of OC. The pooled sensitivity and 95% CIs of HE4, CA125 and HE4+CA125 in this subgroup were 0.71 (0.67-0.75), 0.74 (0.69-0.78) and 0.90 (0.87-0.92), respectively; the pooled specificity and 95% CIs of HE4, CA125 and HE4+CA125 were 0.92 (0.90-0.94), 0.73 (0.69-0.76) and 0.85 (0.82-0.87), respectively. The diagnostic accuracy of HE4 in distinguishing OC from other benign gynecological diseases was found to be to be superior to that of CA125 and the combination of HE4 and CA125 may enhance the diagnostic sensitivity.

CRISPR/Cas9 is a novel and effective genome editing technique, but its application is not widely expanded to manipulate long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) expression. The lncRNA urothelial carcinoma-associated 1 (UCA1) is upregulated in bladder cancer and promotes the progression of bladder cancer. Here, we design gRNAs specific to UCA1 and construct CRISPR/Cas9 systems targeting UCA1. Single CRISPR/Cas9-UCA1 can effectively inhibit UCA1 expression when transfected into 5637 and T24 bladder cancer cells, while the combined transfection of the two most effective CRISPR/Cas9-UCA1s can generate more satisfied inhibitory effect. CRISPR/Cas9-UCA1s attenuate UCA1 expression via targeted genome-specific DNA cleavage, resulting in the significant inhibition of cell proliferation, migration and invasion in vitro and in vivo. The mechanisms associated with the inhibitory effect of CRISPR/Cas9-UCA1 on malignant phenotypes of bladder cancer are attributed to the induction of cell cycle arrest at G1 phase, a substantial increase of apoptosis, and an enhanced activity of MMPs. Additionally, urinary UCA1 can be used as a non-invasive diagnostic marker for bladder cancer as revealed by a meta-analysis. Collectively, our data suggest that CRISPR/Cas9 technique can be used to down-modulate lncRNA expression, and urinary UCA1 may be used as a non-invasive marker for diagnosis of bladder cancer.

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