Cytotoxic lymphocytes-related gene ITK from a systematic CRISPR screen could predict prognosis of ovarian cancer patients with distant metastasis

Panaxadiol targeting IL2 inducible T cell kinase promotes T cell immunity in radiotherapy

Ginseng, as a traditional Chinese medicine, has a good protective effect against radiotherapy, but its mechanism in radiotherapy still needs to be further explored. The active ingredients of Ginseng were analyzed according to pharmacodynamics in the Traditional Chinese Medicine Systems Pharmacology Database and Analysis Platform (TCMSP) database, and the target genes of active ingredients were screened by UniProt, PubChem and Swiss target prediction database. The differentially expressed genes of GSE6871 and GSE20162 were analyzed from the GEO database. Further, cluster analysis and enrichment analysis were carried out through protein-protein interaction network to determine hub gene. Next, build the drug-disease target network, conduct molecular docking simulation, and determine the key ingredients and targets of Ginseng on radiotherapy. We screened 16 active ingredients of Ginseng and 747 target genes from the TCMSP database. Eighty-two common differentially expressed genes were obtained by the GEO database. After topological analysis, we finally determined CD28, FYN, IL2 inducible T cell kinase (ITK), MYC and CD247 as hub genes. After integrating the drug-disease target network and molecular docking, we found that Panaxadiol, as an active ingredient of Ginseng, can target ITK to participate in T cell signal receptor pathway and act on radiotherapy. Panaxadiol can act on the key target ITK of radiotherapy, participate in T cell signal receptor pathway, and then affect the proliferation, differentiation and immune response of radiotherapy T cells, so as to reduce the side effects of radiotherapy.

Strategies to overcome the main challenges of the use of CRISPR/Cas9 as a replacement for cancer therapy

CRISPR/Cas9 (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats-associated protein 9) shows the opportunity to treat a diverse array of untreated various genetic and complicated disorders. Therapeutic genome editing processes that target disease-causing genes or mutant genes have been greatly accelerated in recent years as a consequence of improvements in sequence-specific nuclease technology. However, the therapeutic promise of genome editing has yet to be explored entirely, many challenges persist that increase the risk of further mutations. Here, we highlighted the main challenges facing CRISPR/Cas9-based treatments and proposed strategies to overcome these limitations, for further enhancing this revolutionary novel therapeutics to improve long-term treatment outcome human health.

CRISPR/Cas9: A revolutionary genome editing tool for human cancers treatment

Cancer is a genetic disease stemming from genetic and epigenetic mutations and is the second most common cause of death across the globe. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) is an emerging gene-editing tool, acting as a defense system in bacteria and archaea. CRISPR/Cas9 technology holds immense potential in cancer diagnosis and treatment and has been utilized to develop cancer disease models such as medulloblastoma and glioblastoma mice models. In diagnostics, CRISPR can be used to quickly and efficiently detect genes involved in various cancer development, proliferation, metastasis, and drug resistance. CRISPR/Cas9 mediated cancer immunotherapy is a well-known treatment option after surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. It has marked a turning point in cancer treatment. However, despite its advantages and tremendous potential, there are many challenges such as off-target effects, editing efficiency of CRISPR/Cas9, efficient delivery of CRISPR/Cas9 components into the target cells and tissues, and low efficiency of HDR, which are some of the main issues and need further research and development for completely clinical application of this novel gene editing tool. Here, we present a CRISPR/Cas9 mediated cancer treatment method, its role and applications in various cancer treatments, its challenges, and possible solution to counter these challenges.