Dual intron-targeted CRISPR-Cas9-mediated disruption of the AML RUNX1-RUNX1T1 fusion gene effectively inhibits proliferation and decreases tumor volume in vitro and in vivo.

Oncogenic fusion drivers are common in hematological cancers and are thus relevant targets of future CRISPR-Cas9-based treatment strategies. However, breakpoint-location variation in patients pose a challenge to traditional breakpoint-targeting CRISPR-Cas9-mediated disruption strategies. Here we present a new dual intron-targeting CRISPR-Cas9 treatment strategy, for targeting t(8;21) found in 5-10% of de novo acute myeloid leukemia (AML), which efficiently disrupts fusion genes without prior identification of breakpoint location.

Rapid and Efficient Gene Deletion by CRISPR/Cas9.

CRISPR/Cas9 is a powerful genetic engineering technology that enables the introduction of genomic changes such as deletions and insertions of specific bits of DNA in cells with high precision. Compared to other programmable DNA nuclease such as ZFNs and TALENs, the specific binding of the Cas9 nuclease is mediated by a small guide RNA (gRNA), which can easily be designed to target any locus in the genome. The ease of generating novel gRNA vectors and its high efficiency has rapidly made CRISPR-Cas9 the dominant tool in gene editing applications, including gene knockout, knockin, tagging, etc.