Small-molecule enhancers of CRISPR-induced homology-directed repair in gene therapy: A medicinal chemist's perspective.

Drug Discov Today

Department of Pharmacy, Faculty of Science, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117543, Singapore. Electronic address:

Published: September 2022

CRISPR technologies are increasingly being investigated and utilized for the treatment of human genetic diseases via genome editing. CRISPR-Cas9 first generates a targeted DNA double-stranded break, and a functional gene can then be introduced to replace the defective copy in a precise manner by templated repair via the homology-directed repair (HDR) pathway. However, this is challenging owing to the relatively low efficiency of the HDR pathway compared with a rival random repair pathway known as non-homologous end joining (NHEJ). Small molecules can be employed to increase the efficiency of HDR and decrease that of NHEJ to improve the efficiency of precise knock-in genome editing. This review discusses the potential usage of such small molecules in the context of gene therapy and their drug-likeness, from a medicinal chemist's perspective.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.drudis.2022.06.006DOI Listing

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