Genome editing tool identifies inactivate cancer mutations

Cutting out the cancer gene maybe closer to being a reality than before with CRISPR/Cas9, a gene editing tool. Researchers have found a way to use the tool to diagnose inactive cancer mutations, which has the potential to be a big step forward in cancer research.

A study conducted by researchers from Germany's National Center for Tumor Disease (NCT) in Dresden found that the technology is capable of fighting cancer before the cells have time to metastasize.

"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" said Frank Buchholz, leader of the study.

Using data from more than 500,000 reports of cancer mutations, researchers found that about 80 percent of the mutated cells could be cut using CRISPR/Cas9. The technology could cut the cancer mutations without harming the healthy alleles within the DNA. Cas9, when paired with cancer-specific guide gRNAs, was also able to identify the mutation that causes cancer cells to grow.

"This is an important advance, because we can now rapidly separate driver from passenger mutations. 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. Based on the obtained results an individualized therapy could be initiated,” said Buchholz.