Vaginal Cancer Essay

Once the complex was bound to the DNA, a cut would be made to eliminate and destroy the invaders. 83% of archaeal genomes and 45% of bacterial genomes (Shabbir, M. et al, 2016) were shown to be able to successfully utilize the CRISPR Cas9 system. These are very promising statistics, so it is no wonder that there has been such an advancement in the past few years to bring this technology to eukaryotic cells, mammalian cells and eventually human cells.

For many years biomedical researchers like myself have been trying to create more proactive ways to amend the genome for living cells. In more recent fieldwork studies there has been a new state of the art instrument based on bacterial CRISP in close works with protein 9 often referred to as CAS9 from the streptococcus progenies have possibly unlocked new data. The CRISP/CAS9 tries to manipulate the function of the gene using homologous recombination and RNA interference, but is set back because it can only provide short term restriction of the genes function and it’s iffy off- target effects.

CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat, referring to the repeating DNA sequences found in the genomes of microorganisms. CRISPR technology allows scientists to make precise changes in genes by splicing and replacing these DNA sequences with new ones. Through these changes, the biology of the cell is altered and possibly affects the health of an organism. The possibilities are endless as this offers opportunities in curing deadly diseases, modifying genes, and changing humanity as we know it. Although bioengineering has been around since the 1960s, CRISPR is significant because of the comparative low costs and the ease of the procedure to

The author gives a brief history of past genome editing but thoroughly explains the history and mechanism of the CRISPR technology. She elaborates on how the technology has already been used to cure diseases and speculates on its future uses and regulation.

The University of Pennsylvania19 performed a phase 1 clinical trial to test the safety in humans of CCR5-modified cells and how “zinc finger” modified T cells affect HIV. They took 12 participants and isolated large numbers of their T-cells. A viral vector was then used to insert the ZFN into the cells to knock out the CCR5 protein. The cells were then re-infused back into the patient and the patient was followed up with every three months for four years to check if the ZFN modified CD4+T cells were still found in the blood. They were able to allelic disrupt 11-28% of the modified autologous CD4-enriched T-cells that was infused into each person. The decline in circulating CCR5-modified cells was significantly less than the decline in un-modified cells with a p-value of 0.02. In most patients overall the blood level of the HIV DNA was decreased. The results of this study found that within the limits of this study CCR5-modified autologous CD4 T-cells infusion were safe.15 Sangamo Biosciences and colleagues17, 18 has performed two phase 1 clinical trials and one phase 2 clinical trial to test autologous T-cells that were genetically modified at the CCR5 gene. The purpose of these clinical studies was to determine if “zinc finger” modified CD4+ T-cells were safe to give to humans and how it affected HIV. They took 54 participants

The CRISPR Team was fortunate to be a part of the “Virus Documentary” (SciChannel) and conduct successful experiments discovering the activity of viruses. Through a series of test conducted by The CRISPR Team, it

“4,210 deaths have occurred with cervical cancer.”(cancer.net) 12,820 women in the U.S will be diagnosed. If the cancer has spread from the cervix to other parts it’s a five year survival rate is 17 percent. The 5 year survival rate tells you what percent of women live at least 5 years after the cancer is found. The 5 year survival rate for all women with cervical cancer is 68%. For white women, the 5 year survival rate are 69%. For african american women the survival rate is 57%. “More than 15% of cases of cervical cancer are found in women over 65.” “(key statistics)” In the United States, Hispanic women are most likely to get cervical cancer, followed by African Americans, Asians and Pacific Islanders and whites. American Indians and Alaskan natives have the lowest risk of cervical cancer in this country. Cervical cancer rates for women have gone up every year for women and if we don’t find better treatments we won’t get to point of curing this

Risk factor: Race/ ethnicity- some race/ethnicity, including American Indian, Black, Hispanic, are considered to be a risk factor of cervical cancer because they have a high rate of cervical cancer (CDC, 2000).

The rate is more than twice of what is seen in non-Hispanic white women. African-American women develop cervical cancer about 50% more often than non-Hispanic white women. Besides ethnicity, other factors that can increase the risk of getting cervical cancer are smoking, using birth control pills for a long time, and having multiple sex partners (CDC, 2010).

With more than 500,000 new cases being detected each year, cervical cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer affecting women worldwide.1, 2 A very high burden of cervical cancer mortality is found in developing countries, where nearly 9 out of 10 cases result in cervical cancer-related mortality among women.3, 4 These healthcare disparities can be largely explained by the lack of access to effective cervical cancer screening programs in low-resource settings, such as Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), that allow for early detection and treatment.5 African women have an extremely high incidence of cervical cancer, with approximately 420,000 new cases, half of which die per year.6 Kenya has the second highest incidence of invasive cervical cancer (ICC) in Africa.6,7 The

The CRISPR/Cas9 system requires a proto-spacer adjacent motif (PAM) sequence. The PAM is necessary for cleavage of target DNA by Cas9, allowing differentiation between invading viral genome (in this case HIV) and the CRISPR locus in the host genome. One limitation of the CRISPR/Cas9 system to disrupt HIV could be due to low altering specificity, as the target loci is very small, so significant off target cleavage can occur (Wang et al.). CRISPR-Cas9 may create non-specific mutations in areas of the genome with similar homology, outside of the HIV provirus locus, which may cause cellular transformation (Larson et al., Tu et al.). Selection of Cas9 homologs with a longer PAM may decrease the probability of non-specific gene target and Cas9 homologs

Researchers have moved one step closer to developing a cure for AIDS, the killer which claimed 39 million lives since its discovery in the 1980s. Using the relatively new CRISPR/Cas9 technology, scientists at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University have eliminated HIV-1 genomes from human T-cells. CRISPR/Cas9 is a powerful biological tool used for genome editing and altering gene expressions. Applications of CRISPR/Cas9 range widely from modifying yeast to produce biofuels, to inactivating genes in human cell lines. Kaminski et al. (2016) believe that CRISPR/Cas9 is the key to curing AIDS because it holds more potential compared to the current method, antiretroviral therapy (ART). ART uses multiple medications to combat against

CRISPR/Cas9 is one of the newest genomic technologies that has completely revolutionized the understanding of disease

With increased research into HIV/AIDS, we have been able to decrease the infection rate and decrease the amount of AIDS-related infections.1,3 This increased research has now also grown into possible gene therapy for HIV patients. The specific gene therapy that will be looked at in this essay is CRISPR/CAS9. This way of gene editing was found in archaea and bacteria and it is their form of an immune system, being able to remove sections of DNA from their chromosome.4 Today people are using it to target certain genes and remove them from the human genome, and possibly replace them with properly functioning genes in the case of genetic disorders.

There has been countless number of efforts to develop an effective gene transfer approach to treat HIV-1 infections globally. Many transgenes have been identified to inhibit in vitro HIV-1 infections. As drug resistant HIV-1 is increasingly common even with patients receiving HAART, designing drug treatment methods have been challenging. Therefore, investigation into new therapeutic approaches should continue. Gene delivery plays an important supporting role developing potential therapies directed towards HIV-1 infections. The goals of the anti-HIV-1 gene therapy are to deliver transgenes to directly susceptible cells, Immunize against HIV-1 antigens, inhibit HIV-1 proliferation in target organs, and deliver to Hematopoietic Progenitor Cells. Delivering transgenes to susceptible cells will make them resistant to HIV-1 infections and inhibit viral replication. When CCR5 a major coreceptor for HIV was disrupted in the “Berlin Patient” led to the revival of gene therapy. The naturally occurring CCR5-Δ32 mutation that results in a frameshift mutation dislocates the CCR5 expression on the cell surface. The “Berlin patient” who was HIV+ patient with lymphoma was transplanted with bone marrow from a donor with CCR5-Δ32 mutation and became ‘cured’ of HIV. But as only a small general population with CCR5-Δ32 mutation can be identified alternative methods must be identified for gene therapy.