CRISPR Helps Find Three New Targets for Potential HIV Treatments

[POZ Editors]

Researchers have used the cutting-edge CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology to identify five potential targets for HIV treatments, including three new discoveries. Because these targets are all human genes, treatments that go after them are likely less likely to give rise to drug resistance compared with existing antiretrovirals (ARVs) that target proteins crucial to the rapidly mutating virus’s life cycle.

The two previously identified genes were the CCR5 gene, responsible for the coreceptor on the surface of CD4 cells to which most HIV attaches in order to infect the cell, as well as the CD4 gene itself.

Read more...
https://www.poz.com/article/crispr-helps-find-three-new-targets-potential-hiv-treatments

[Almost2late]

More news research on CRISPR/cas9
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170501112514.htm

[tryingtostay]

Just started reading the same story over at Medical Express

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-05-gene-strategy-hiv-infection-animals.html

[POZ Editors]

A new amfAR grant to study another CRISPR technology.

Can This Lesser-Known Type of CRISPR Gene Editing Eradicate the HIV Reservoir?

When you read about cutting-edge gene-editing tools to fight HIV, it’s probably a reference to CRISPR/Cas 9 technology. But another, less commonly used type exists: CRISPR/Cpf1. Two scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School just received a grant from amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research to explore whether this other CRISPR technology can help eradicate the HIV reservoir.

As UMass Med Now reports, the three-phase grant goes to Jeremy Luban, MD, a professor of molecular medicine, and Scot Wolfe, PhD, a professor of molecular, cell and cancer biology.

Read more...
https://www.poz.com/article/can-lesserknown-type-crispr-gene-editing-eradicate-hiv-reservoir