Decision is part of UK effort to diagnose 75% of all cancers at stage I or stage II by 2028 and demonstrates to pathologists that the technology used in liquid biopsy tests is improving at a fast pace
Pathologists and medical laboratory scientists know that when it comes to liquid biopsy tests to detect cancer, there is plenty of both hope and hype. Nevertheless, following a successful pilot study at the Christie NHS Foundation Trust in Manchester, England, which ran from 2015-2021, the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) is pushing forward with the use of liquid biopsy tests for certain cancer patients, The Guardian reported.
NHS’ decision to roll out the widespread use of liquid biopsies—a screening tool used to search for cancer cells or pieces of DNA from tumor cells in a blood sample—across the UK is a hopeful sign that ongoing improvements in this diagnostic technology are reaching a point where it may be consistently reliable when used in clinical settings.
The national program provides personalized drug therapies based on the genetic markers found in the blood tests of cancer patients who have solid tumors and are otherwise out of treatment options. The liquid biopsy creates, in essence, a match-making service for patients and clinical trials.
Liquid Biopsy Genetic Testing for Cancer Patients
“The learnings from our original ‘Target’ study in Manchester were that genetic testing needs to be done on a large scale to identify rare genetic mutations and that broader access to medicines through clinical trials being undertaken across the country rather than just one site are required,” Matthew Krebs, PhD, Clinical Senior Lecturer in Experimental Cancer Medicine at the University of Manchester, told The Guardian.
Krebs, an honorary consultant in medical oncology at the Christie NHS Foundation Trust, led the Target National pilot study.
“This study will allow thousands of cancer patients in the UK to access genetic testing via a liquid biopsy. This will enable us to identify rare genetic mutations that in some patients could mean access to life-changing experimental medicines that can provide great treatment responses, where there are otherwise limited or no other treatment options available.”
Detecting cancers at earlier stages of disease—when treatment is more likely to result in improved survival—has become a strategic cancer planning priority in the UK, theBMJ noted.
“The NHS is committed to diagnosing 75% of all cancers at stage I or II by 2028, from around 50% currently,” the BMJ wrote. “Achieving such progress in less than a decade would be highly ambitious, even without disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this context, considerable hope has been expressed that blood tests for circulating free DNA—sometimes known as liquid biopsy—could help achieve earlier detection of cancers.”
The Guardian noted that the UK’s initiative will use a liquid biopsy test made by Swiss-healthcare giant Roche.
“We can’t guarantee that we will find a fault in the genetic code of every cancer patient we recruit, or that if we do, there will be a suitable drug trial for them,” Matthew Krebs, PhD (above), lead scientist of the NHS’ Target National pilot study, told The Guardian. “However, as we learn more about the genetics of cancer in this study, it will help doctors and scientists develop new treatments to help people in the future. Ultimately, we hope liquid biopsy testing will be adopted into routine NHS care, but we need studies such as this to show the benefit of the test on a large scale and provide the evidence that patients can benefit from being matched to targeted medicines on the basis of the blood test.” (Photo copyright: Cancer Research UK Manchester Centre.)
In her article “The Promise of Liquid Biopsies for Cancer Diagnosis,” published in the American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC) Evidence-based Oncology, serial healthcare entrepreneur and faculty lecturer at Harvard Medical School Liz Kwo, MD, detailed the optimism surrounding the “revolutionary screening tool,” including its potential for:
identifying mechanisms of resistance to therapies,
measuring remaining disease after treatment,
assessing cancer relapse or resistance to treatment, and
eliminating risk surrounding traditional biopsies.
The AJMC article estimated the liquid biopsy market will be valued at $6 billion by 2030. However, Kwo also noted that clinical adoption of liquid biopsies in the US continues to face challenges.
Welch compared the investor hype surrounding liquid biopsies to that of the now-defunct blood testing company Theranos, which lured high-profile investors to pour millions into its unproven diagnostic technology.
“Effective cancer screening requires more than early detection. It also requires that starting therapy earlier helps people live to older ages than they would if they started treatment later,” he wrote. “If that doesn’t happen, liquid biopsies will only lead to people living longer with the knowledge they have a potentially incurable disease without extending their lives. These people would be subjected to cancer therapies and their toxicities earlier, but at a time when they would otherwise be experiencing no cancer-related signs or symptoms.”
And so, while there’s much excitement about the possibility of a minimally invasive way to detect cancer, anatomic pathology groups and clinical laboratories will have to wait and see if the hype and hope surrounding liquid biopsies is substantiated by further research.
Smaller cities and rural towns are finding the NWSS a useful early warning tool for tracking COVID-19 in their communities
In a move that mirrors similar programs around the world, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now monitors sewage nationwide and records levels of SARS-CoV-2 in an effort to prevent new outbreaks of COVID-19 and spot any new variants of the coronavirus.
Advances in gene sequencing technologies are enabling the CDC’s National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS), and in many communities, clinical laboratories and health system laboratories have worked with local health authorities to test wastewater since onset of the pandemic.
“What started as a grassroots effort by academic researchers and wastewater utilities has quickly become a nationwide surveillance system with more than 34,000 samples collected representing approximately 53 million Americans,” noted epidemiologist Amy Kirby, PhD (above) during the telebriefing.
Kirby is a Senior Service Fellow in the Waterborne Disease Prevention Branch at the CDC.
“Currently, CDC is supporting 37 states, four cities, and two territories to help develop wastewater surveillance systems in their communities. More than 400 testing sites around the country have already begun their wastewater surveillance efforts,” she added.
“Estimates suggests between 40% and 80% of people with COVID-19 shed viral RNA in their feces, making wastewater and sewage an important opportunity for monitoring the spread of infection,” said epidemiologist Amy Kirby, PhD (above), a Senior Service Fellow in the Waterborne Disease Prevention Branch at the CDC. The NWSS’ findings could enable public health officials to better allocate mobile clinical laboratory testing and COVID-19 vaccination sites around the country. This would be especially beneficial in rural and underserved healthcare populations. (Photo copyright: Center for Global Safe Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene.)
Genetic Sequencing Enables Tracking of Virus and Bacteria
At the time of the telebriefing, the federal agency anticipated having an additional 250 sites online within a few weeks and even more sites added within the coming months. Many of the participating sites are sequencing the genes of their biological samples and reporting that data to the CDC.
“So, we’ve seen from very early days in the pandemic that rates of detection in wastewater correlate very well with other clinical indicators, like pace rates and hospitalization and test positivity,” Kirby stated. “That data continues to come in and it continues to be a very solid indicator of what’s going on in the community.”
Wastewater, also referred to as sewage, includes water from toilets, showers, and sinks that may contain human fecal matter and water from rain and industrial sources. To use the CDC’s wastewater surveillance system:
Wastewater is collected from a community area served by the surveillance system as it flows into a local water treatment plant.
Collected samples are sent to an environmental or public health laboratory where they are tested for SARS-CoV-2.
Health departments submit the testing data to the CDC through the online NWSS Data Collection and Integration for Public Health Event Response (DCIPHER) portal.
The DCIPHER system then analyzes the data and reports the results back to the health department for use in their COVID-19 response.
Beginning in February 2022, members of the public can view the results of collected data online through the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker.
Wastewater Sampling Is a ‘Critical Early Warning System’
According to the CDC NWSS website, there are many advantages to using wastewater surveillance in the fight against COVID-19, including:
Wastewater can capture the presence of the virus shed by people both with and without symptoms.
Health officials can determine if infections are increasing or decreasing within a certain monitoring site.
Wastewater surveillance does not depend on people having access to healthcare or the availability of COVID-19 testing.
It is possible to implement wastewater surveillance in many communities as nearly 80% of the US population are served by municipal wastewater collection systems.
“These built-in advantages can inform important public health decisions, such as where to allocate mobile testing and vaccination sites,” Kirby said. “Public health agencies have also used wastewater data to forecast changes in hospital utilization, providing additional time to mobilize resources and preparation for increasing cases.”
The wastewater sampling represents a critical early warning system for COVID-19 surges and variants, and the CDC hopes this type of sampling and research can be utilized in the future for other infectious diseases.
“Wastewater surveillance can be applicable to a wide variety of health concerns. And so, we are working to expand the National Wastewater Surveillance platform to use it for gathering data on other pathogens, and we expect that work to commence by the end of this year,” Kirby said. “Our targets include antibiotic resistance, foodborne infections like E. Coli, salmonella, norovirus, influenza, and the emerging fungal pathogen Candida Auris.”
Critical Surveillance Tool for Microbiology Laboratories
Independent of the nation’s network of public health laboratories, expansion of this program may give microbiology and clinical laboratories in smaller cities and rural towns an opportunity to test wastewater specimens in support of local wastewater monitoring programs.
As the CDC develops this surveillance network into a more formal program, microbiology labs may find it useful to learn which infectious diseases are showing up in their localities, often days or weeks before any patients test positive for the same infectious agents.
That would give pathologists and clinical laboratory leaders an early warning to be on the alert for positive test results of infectious diseases that wastewater monitoring has confirmed exist in the community.
At that reduced cost, clinical laboratories in developing countries with no access to WGS could have it as a critical tool in their fight against the spread of deadly bacteria and viruses
New research into a low-cost way to sequence bacterial genomes—for as little as $10—is predicted to give public health authorities in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) a new tool with which to more quickly identify and control disease outbreaks.
This new approach offers an alternative to more expensive Whole genome sequencing (WGS) methodologies, which clinical laboratories in developed countries typically use to identify and track outbreaks of infectious diseases. And with SARS-CoV-2 variants resulting in increased COVID-19 infections, the ability to perform low-cost, rapid, and accurate WGS is becoming increasingly important.
But for many developing countries that need it the most, the cost of WGS has kept this critical technology out of reach.
Now, a global consortium of scientists has successfully established an efficient and inexpensive pipeline for the worldwide collection and sequencing of bacterial genomes. The large-scale sequencing method could potentially provide researchers in LIMCs with tools to sequence large numbers of bacterial and viral pathogens. This discovery also could strengthen research collaborations and help tackle future pandemics.
The team of scientists, led by researchers at the Earlham Institute and the University of Liverpool, both located in the UK, are confident their technology can be made accessible to clinical laboratories in LMICs around the globe.
“It has been 26 years since the first bacterial genome was sequenced, and it is now possible to sequence bacterial isolates at scale,” Neil Hall, PhD (above), director of the Earlham Institute and one of the authors of the study, told Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News. “However, access to this game-changing technology for scientists in low- and middle-income countries has remained restricted. The need to ‘democratize’ the field of pathogen genomic analysis prompted us to develop a new strategy to sequence thousands of bacterial isolates with collaborators based in many economically challenged countries.” (Photo copyright: Earlham Institute.)
Streamlining Collection and Sequencing
The international team of scientists aimed their innovative WGS approach at streamlining the collection and sequencing of bacterial isolates (variants). The researchers collected more than 10,400 clinical and environmental bacterial isolates from several LMICs in less than a year. They optimized their sample logistics pipeline by transporting the bacterial isolates as thermolysates from other countries to the UK. Those isolates were sequenced using a low cost, low input automated method for rapid WGS. They then performed the gene library construction and DNA sequencing analysis for a total reagent cost of less than $10 per genome.
The scientists focused their research on Salmonella enterica, a pathogen that causes infections and deadly diseases in human populations. Non-typhoidal Salmonella (NTS) have been associated with enterocolitis, a zoonotic disease in humans linked to industrial food production.
Because the disease is common in humans, there have been more genome sequences generated for Salmonella than any other type of germ.
“In recent years, new lineages of NTS serovars Typhimurium and Enteritidis have been recognized as common causes of invasive bloodstream infections (iNTS disease), responsible for about 77,000 deaths per year worldwide,” the researchers wrote in their Gen Biology paper. “Approximately 80% of deaths due to iNTS disease occurs in sub-Saharan Africa, where iNTS disease has become endemic.”
Increasing Access to Genomics Technologies in Developing Countries
The research consortium 10,000 Salmonella Genomes Project (10KSG) led the large-scale WGS initiative. The alliance involves contributors from 25 institutions in 16 countries and was designed to generate information relevant to the epidemiology, drug resistance, and virulence factors of Salmonella using WGS techniques.
“One of the most significant challenges facing public health researchers in LMICs is access to state-of-the-art technology, Jay Hinton, PhD, Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis at the University of Liverpool and one of the paper’s authors, told Technology Networks. “For a combination of logistical and economic reasons, the regions associated with the greatest burden of severe bacterial disease have not benefited from widespread availability of WGS. The 10,000 Salmonella genomes project was designed to begin to address this inequality.”
The authors noted in their study that the costs associated with sequencing have remained high mostly due to sample transportation and library construction and the fact that there are only a few centers in the world that have the ability to handle large-scale bacterial genome projects.
“Limited funding resources led us to design a genomic approach that ensured accurate sample tracking and captured comprehensive metadata for individual bacterial isolates, while keeping costs to a minimum for the Consortium,” Hall told Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News(GEN). “The pipeline streamlined the large-scale collection and sequencing of samples from LMICs.”
“The number of publicly available sequenced Salmonella genomes reached 350,000 in 2021 and are available from several online repositories,” he added. “However, limited genome-based surveillance of Salmonella infections has been done in LMICs, and the existing dataset did not accurately represent the Salmonella pathogens that are currently causing disease across the world.”
The $10 cost is designed to help healthcare systems in developing countries identify the specific genetic composition of infectious diseases. That’s the necessary first step for developing a diagnostic test that enables physicians to make an accurate diagnosis and initiate appropriate therapy.
“The adoption of large-scale genome sequencing and analysis of bacterial pathogens will be an enormous asset to public health and surveillance in LMI countries,” molecular microbiologist Blanca Perez Sepulveda, PhD, told GEN. Sepulveda is a postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Liverpool and one of the authors of the study.
Improvement in next-generation sequencing technology has reduced costs, shortened turnaround time (TAT), and improved accuracy of whole genome sequencing. Once this low-cost method for collecting and transporting bacterial sequences becomes widely available, clinical laboratories in developing countries may be able to adopt it for genome analysis of different strains and variants of bacteria and viruses.
Though the variant poses low risk thanks to modern HIV treatments, the scientists stress the importance of access to early clinical laboratory testing for at-risk individuals
With the global healthcare industry hyper focused on arrival of the next SARS-CoV-2 variant, pathologists and clinical laboratories may be relieved to learn that—though researchers in the Netherlands discovered a previously unknown “highly virulent” strain of HIV—the lead scientist of the study says there’s “no cause for alarm.”
In a news release, researchers at the University of Oxford Big Data Institute said the HIV variant got started in the Netherlands in the 1990s, spread quickly into the 2000s, and that prior to treatment, people with the new virulent subtype B (VB variant) had exceptionally high viral loads compared to people with other HIV variants.
Fortunately, the scientist also found that around 2010, thanks to antiretroviral drug therapy, the severe variant began to decline.
In an interview with NPR, Chris Wymant, PhD, the study’s lead author, said, “People with this variant have a viral load that is three to four times higher than usual for those with HIV. This characteristic means the virus progresses into serious illness twice as fast, and also makes it more contagious.”
Fortunately, he added, “Existing medications work very well to treat even very virulent variants like this one, cutting down on transmission and reducing the chance of developing severe illness.
“Nobody should be alarmed,” he continued. “It responds exactly as well to treatment as HIV normally does. There’s no need to develop special treatments for this variant.”
Wymant is senior researcher in statistical genetics and pathogen dynamics at the Big Data Institute (BDI).
Epidemiologist Chris Wymant, PhD (above), lead author of the Big Data Institute study at Oxford University, says today’s modern HIV antiretroviral drug therapies effectively treat for the “highly viral” HIV VB variant he and his team discovered. “Nobody should be alarmed,” he told NPR. “It responds exactly as well to treatment as HIV normally does.” Nevertheless, he stressed the importance of access to early clinical laboratory testing for at-risk individuals. (Photo copyright: Oxford Big Data Institute.)
In their published study, the BDI researchers reported that their analysis of genetic sequences of the VB variant suggested it “arose in the 1990s from de novo (of new) mutation, not recombination, with increased transmissibility and an unfamiliar molecular mechanism of virulence.
“By the time, they were diagnosed, these individuals were vulnerable to developing AIDS within two to three years. The virus lineage, which has apparently arisen de novo since around the millennium, shows extensive change across the genome affecting almost 300 amino acids, which makes it hard to discern the mechanism for elevated virulence,” the researchers noted.
The researchers analyzed a data set from the project BEEHIVE (Bridging the Epidemiology and Evolution of HIV in Europe and Uganda). They found 15 of 17 people positive for the VB variant residing in the Netherlands. That prompted them to focus on a cohort of more than 6,700 Dutch HIV positive people in the ATHENA (AIDS Therapy Evaluation in the Netherlands) cohort database, where they found 92 more individuals with the VB variant, bringing the total to 109.
According to a Medscape report on the study’s findings, people with the VB variant showed the following characteristics:
Double the rate of CD4-positive T-cell declines (indicator of immune system damage by HIV), compared to others with subtype-B strains.
Increased risk of infecting others with the virus based on transmissibility associated with variant branching.
Wymant says access to clinical laboratory testing is key to curtailing the number of people who contract the VB variant. “Getting people tested as soon as possible, getting them onto treatment as soon as possible, has helped reduce the numbers of this variant even though we didn’t know that it existed,” he told NPR.
The University of Oxford Big Data Institute study is another example of how constantly improving genome sequencing technology allows scientists to dig deeper into genetic material for insights that can advance the understanding of many diseases and health conditions.
This new knowledge about the human genome may lead to a new set of biomarkers and clinical laboratory tests for predisposition to this health condition
Researchers across the globe are working to understand why some people who become infected with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus experience loss of smell (anosmia) and taste (ageusia) often for months following recovery from COVID-19 infection.
Now, pathologists and medical laboratory managers will be interested to learn that scientists from DNA testing company 23andMe believe they have identified a genetic risk factor associated with the condition. The discovery could lead to a new set of biomarkers for predisposition to loss of taste or smell that could help experts develop improved precision medicine treatments for similar conditions.
“Early data suggests that supporting cells of the olfactory epithelium are the ones mostly being infected by the virus and presumably this leads to the death of the neurons themselves. But we don’t really know why and when that happens, and why it seems to preferentially happen in certain individuals,” he added.
To perform their study, the 23andMe researchers examined the genetic tests of 69,841 individuals who self-reported that they had received a positive COVID-19 test. 68% of those people stated that they had experienced either loss of smell or taste as part of their symptomology of the illness. All the participants in the survey reside in either the United States or the United Kingdom.
After contrasting the genetic differences between those who experienced loss of taste or smell as a symptom of COVID-19 and those who did not, the team discovered a region of the genome associated with a spot located near the UGT2A1 and UGT2A2 genes. These two genes are expressed within tissue in the nose and are involved in smell and the metabolization of odorants.
“It was this really beautiful example of science where, starting with a large body of activated research participants who have done this 23andMe test, we were able to quickly gain biological insights into this disease that would otherwise be very difficult to do,” said geneticist Adam Auton, PhD (above), Vice President, Human Genetics at 23andMe and lead author of the study, in the USA Today article. If found to be accurate, the findings could lead to clinically-useful clinical laboratory tests and to development of improved precision medicine therapies for patients who are predisposed to the condition. (Photo copyright: 23andMe.)
It’s unclear if or how UGT2A1 and UGT2A2 genes may be involved in the process that leads to loss of taste or smell, but the 23andMe researchers hypothesize the genes may play a role in the physiology of infected cells which leads to the impairments.
The team found that 72% of female respondents reported loss of taste or smell as a symptom of COVID-19, which was higher than the 61% of male respondents who reported the same symptoms. In addition, the respondents who reported loss of taste or smell were typically younger than those who did not report those symptoms and persons of East Asian or African American ancestry were significantly less likely to report those symptoms.
An earlier study, titled, “Growing Public Health Concerns of COVID-19 Chronic Olfactory Dysfunction,” which appeared in the journal JAMA Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, stated that six months after contracting COVID-19 as many as 1.6 million people in the US experienced either lingering changes to their ability to smell or a complete loss of that sense.
Helping Patients Understand Why They Were Affected
Experts believe 23andMe’s findings may help patients deal with loss of taste or smell after a COVID-19 infection and increase the chance of finding suitable treatments.
“It answers the question of ‘why me’ when it comes to taste and smell loss with COVID-19,” Danielle Reed, PhD, Associate Director, Monell Chemical Senses Center, told USA Today. “Some people have it and some do not. Inborn genetics may partially explain why.”
Earlier research suggested the loss of these senses was related to a failure to protect the sensory cells of the nose and tongue from the viral infection. But according to Reed, the 23andMe study findings suggest a different cause.
“The pathways that break down the chemicals that cause taste and smell in the first place might be over or underactive, reducing or distorting the ability to taste and smell,” she said.
The 23andMe researchers noted their study had a few limitations:
It was biased towards individuals of European ancestry and lacked a replication cohort.
It relied on self-reported cases and symptom status.
No distinction between the loss of taste or smell could be determined as they were combined in a single survey question, making it unclear whether their findings relate more strongly to one symptom or the other.
Currently, there is no clinical imperative to test people in advance to see if they have a genetic predisposition to loss of smell or taste after a COVID-19 infection.
Nevertheless, this new insight into the human genome demonstrates the ongoing pace at which researchers are teasing out useful knowledge about the functions of human DNA. That knowledge will be used to do two things: first, to develop relevant, clinically-useful clinical laboratory tests, and second, to develop therapies for treating people with these genetic predispositions should they experience negative health conditions due to those genetic sequences.
CRISPR-Act 3.0 could significantly increase crop yields and plant diversity worldwide and help fight against global hunger and climate change
Clinical laboratory professionals and pathologists who read Dark Daily are highly aware of CRISPR gene editing technology. We’ve covered the topic in multiple ebriefings over many years. But how many know there’s a version of CRISPR specifically designed for editing and activating plant genes?
Scientists at the University of Maryland (UMD) developed a new version of CRISPRa (CRISPR Activation) for plants which they claim has four to six times the activation capacity of currently available CRISPRa systems and can activate up to seven genes at once. They call their new and improved CRISPRa technology “CRISPR-Act 3.0.”
According to a paper published in the journal Nature Plants, titled, “CRISPR-Act3.0 for Highly Efficient Multiplexed Gene Activation in Plants,” the UMD researchers developed “a highly robust CRISPRa system working in rice, Arabidopsis (rockcress), and tomato, CRISPR-Act 3.0, through systematically exploring different effector recruitment strategies and various transcription activators based on deactivated Streptococcus pyogenes Cas9 (dSpCas9).
“While my lab has produced systems for simultaneous gene editing [multiplexed editing] before, editing is mostly about generating loss of function to improve the crop,” said Yiping Qi, PhD (above), one of the authors of the UMD study, in a new release. “But if you think about it,” he added, “that strategy is finite, because there aren’t endless genes that you can turn off and actually still gain something valuable. Logically, it is a very limited way to engineer and breed better traits, whereas the plant may have already evolved to have different pathways, defense mechanisms, and traits that just need a boost.” (Photo copyright: University of Maryland.)
CRISPR-Act 3.0 Increases Function of Multiple Genes Simultaneously
The UMD researchers successfully applied CRISPR-Act 3.0 technology to activate many types of genes in plants, including the ability to expedite the breeding process via faster flowering. They hope that activating genes in plants to improve functionality will result in better plants and crops.
“Through activation, you can really uplift pathways or enhance existing capacity, even achieve a novel function. Instead of shutting things down, you can take advantage of the functionality already there in the genome and enhance what you know is useful,” said Yiping Qi, PhD, associate professor, Department of Plant Science and Landscape Architecture at the University of Maryland, in a UMD new release.
The scientists also noted that there may be other advantages to this type of multiplexed activation of genes.
“Having a much more streamlined process for multiplexed activation can provide significant breakthroughs. For example, we look forward to using this technology to screen the genome more effectively and efficiently for genes that can help in the fight against climate change and global hunger,” Qi added. “We can design, tailor, and track gene activation with this new system on a larger scale to screen for genes of importance, and that will be very enabling for discovery and translational science in plants.”
The researchers hope this technology can have a major impact on the efficiency of crop and food production.
“This type of technology helps increase crop yield and sustainably feed a growing population in a changing world,” Qi said. “I am very pleased to continue to expand the impacts of CRISPR technologies.”
Feeding the World’s Hungry with CRISPR
CRISPR is a robust tool used for editing genomes that typically operates as “molecular scissors” to cut DNA. CRISPR-Act 3.0, however, uses deactivated CRISPR-Cas9 which can only bind and not cut. This allows the system to work on the activation of proteins for designated genes of interest by binding to certain segments of DNA. The UMD researchers believe there is significant potential for expanding the multiplexed activation further, which could alter and improve genome engineering.
“People always talk about how individuals have potential if you can nurture and promote their natural talents,” Qi said in the UMD news release. “This technology is exciting to me because we are promoting the same thing in plants—how can you promote their potential to help plants do more with their natural capabilities? That is what multiplexed gene activation can do, and it gives us so many new opportunities for crop breeding and enhancement.”
CRISPR is being developed and enhanced in many research settings, and knowledge of how to best use the gene editing technology is rapidly advancing. Though more research on CRISPR-Act 3.0 is needed to ensure its reliability, it’s exciting to consider the potential of gene activation for massively increasing crop yield worldwide.
Not to mention how new CRISPR technologies continue to drive innovations in clinical laboratory diagnostics and precision medicine treatments.
