Tianjin Medical University Eye Hospital, Tianjin, 300384, China.
Hum Genet. 2018 Sep;137(9):679-688. doi: 10.1007/s00439-018-1933-9. Epub 2018 Sep 10.
Retinal degeneration diseases, such as age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa, affect millions of people worldwide and are major causes of irreversible blindness. Effective treatments for retinal degeneration, including drug therapy, gene augmentation or transplantation approaches, have been widely investigated. Nevertheless, more research should be dedicated to therapeutic methods to improve future clinical treatments. Recently, with the rapid development of genome-editing technology, gene therapy has become a potentially effective treatment for retinal degeneration diseases. A clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9) system has been developed as a powerful genome-editing tool in ophthalmic studies. The CRISPR/Cas9 system has been widely applied in basic research to develop animal models and gene therapies in vivo. With the ability to self-renew and the potential to differentiate into different types of cells, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have already been used as a promising tool for understanding disease pathophysiology and evaluating the effect of drug and gene therapeutics. iPSCs are also a cell source for autologous transplantation. In this review, we compared genome-editing strategies and highlighted the advantages and concerns of the CRISPR/Cas9 system. Moreover, the latest progress and applications of the CRISPR/Cas9 system and its combination with iPSCs for the treatment of retinal degenerative diseases are summarized.
视网膜退行性疾病,如年龄相关性黄斑变性和色素性视网膜炎,影响着全球数以百万计的人,是导致不可逆性失明的主要原因。人们广泛研究了治疗视网膜退行性疾病的有效方法,包括药物治疗、基因增强或移植方法。然而,应该投入更多的研究来寻找治疗方法,以改善未来的临床治疗效果。最近,随着基因组编辑技术的快速发展,基因治疗已成为治疗视网膜退行性疾病的一种潜在有效方法。CRISPR/Cas9 系统已被开发为眼科研究中一种强大的基因组编辑工具。CRISPR/Cas9 系统已广泛应用于基础研究,以开发动物模型和体内基因治疗。诱导多能干细胞(iPSCs)具有自我更新的能力,并且具有分化为不同类型细胞的潜能,已被用作了解疾病病理生理学和评估药物及基因治疗效果的有前途的工具。iPSCs 也是自体移植的细胞来源。在这篇综述中,我们比较了基因组编辑策略,并强调了 CRISPR/Cas9 系统的优势和关注点。此外,还总结了 CRISPR/Cas9 系统的最新进展及其与 iPSCs 联合治疗视网膜退行性疾病的应用。