Actualité - Innovation

CRISPR/Cas9 within the SIRIC program

11/30/2020

SIRIC support was a determining factor in the creation of the CRISPR'it platform in 2017

Equipe CRISPR - Raphaël Margueron, Aurélien Boré, Michel Wassef

Plateforme CRISPR / Institut Curie

CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) is a gene editing system.

Genetic screening is a unique opportunity to study the characteristics of cancer cells and, in particular, resistance mechanisms by identifying inactivated genes that create resistance to a given treatment.

This innovative technique allows us to address questions raised by the SIRIC program with a transverse approach.

In vivo CRISPR: a promising technical development

The deployment of CRISPR in vivo would be a major advantage to explore treatment resistance but it's also a significant challenge due to the intrinsic restrictions of 3D cultures.

In 2018, Aurélien Boré (research engineer), was recruted thanks to SIRIC support. His mission is the development of genetic screening technical conditions in vivo.

How does the CRISPR technique work ?
This method can precisely 'turn off' a specific gene in a given cell to study its function. The first step is to select a guide RNA (gRNA) that recognizes the gene in order to target the Cas9 protein. This protein will cut the DNA and provoke mutations. gRNA librairies allow the interrogation of the function of a group of genes at the same time, this is described as genetic screening. Before CRISPR, genetic screenings were, for the most part, limited to specific model organisms. CRISPR allows us to carry out genetic screens in new experimental models and paves the way for the identification of genes whose inactivation has an influence on a specific phenotype (postive screen) or which are essential in certain contexts (negative screen). We can also discover genes implicated in treatment resistance or identify weaknesses in cancerous cells that could become therapeutic targets.

How does the CRISPR technique work ?

This method can precisely 'turn off' a specific gene in a given cell to study its function. The first step is to select a guide RNA (gRNA) that recognizes the gene in order to target the Cas9 protein. This protein will cut the DNA and provoke mutations.

gRNA librairies allow the interrogation of the function of a group of genes at the same time, this is described as genetic screening. Before CRISPR, genetic screenings were, for the most part, limited to specific model organisms.

CRISPR allows us to carry out genetic screens in new experimental models and paves the way for the identification of genes whose inactivation has an influence on a specific phenotype (postive screen) or which are essential in certain contexts (negative screen). We can also discover genes implicated in treatment resistance or identify weaknesses in cancerous cells that could become therapeutic targets.