Gene adjustment technology has a new turning point, promising to cure HIV completely

Researchers at Temple University, Hoa Ky, use a successful CRISPR / Cas9 method to isolate HIV from the human immune system.

CRISPR / Cas9 is the most advanced method of gene regulation technology today. In the medical world, this technology is being highly praised because of its accuracy and potential in improving health as well as the diseases that are genetic or genetically altered. Earlier this year, scientists also first succeeded in treating Duchenne muscular dystrophy with CRISPR / Cas9 technology. And recently this technology has been licensed to apply in artificial insemination and reduce the possibility of miscarriage in the UK.

CRISPR / Cas9 gene adjustment technology.

Basically, CRISPR / Cas9 operation can be understood simply by 2 steps:

Step 1: The specially designed protein is directed to the double strand of DNA of the target cell that needs adjusting and where it extracts a piece of RNA (like DNA but just a single band) from the target cell to identify other cells that contain the same gene segment. The gene fragment in this RNA is called CRISPR.

Step 2: Cas9, a special enzyme, will cooperate with CRISPR to automatically search for other cells with the same RNA code and genetically cut the cells found according to the scientists' wishes.

Cut DNA strips.

The reason why HIV is considered a " 20th century disease " is because of its customization when spawning by cell division. Each cell division, new HIV cells have a very high probability of genetic modification and thus " useless " any of the therapeutic drugs used. Although this did not completely prevent researchers from making ARVs that could prevent HIV replication, now, when the drug is discontinued for a short time, the HIV virus will re-invade. Immune system with dizzying speed. But with this method, patients with HIV in the near future will not need to worry about the risk of HIV recurrence.

Genetic technology has succeeded in solving this " whole-hearted " problem by directly interfering with this cell division process, completely blocking the fertility of HIV bacteria and at the same time blocking any Any re-invasion of the cell has been cured.

Gene technology prevents fertility and reinfection of HIV bacteria.

This study may have completely extinguished any doubts about the availability of the CRISPR / Cas9 method. And despite the initial success in treating HIV thoroughly, scientists still have a long way to go until gene modifications can be applied to the human body. Especially one of the biggest problems encountered is still accuracy in DNA striping.