Researchers Using CRISPR To Develop New Diagnostic Device That Can Identify Various Viral Infections Within Minutes
CRISPR Technology, the gene-editing tool has been heralded as a scientific miracle destined to eradicate diseases from sickle-cell anemia to cancer. And the same time its controversial aspects in that it can be the genetic scissors that tailor the human gene pool is a cause of concern as being an ethically risky technology that can create designer babies.
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Researchers from Case Western Reserve University see a different opportunity in the
CRISPR technique: A new "universal biosensing" point-of-care medical device--similar to the existing commercial blood-glucose sensor--that rapidly and accurately detects troublesome viruses like human papillomavirus (HPV) or parvovirus (parvo).
In order to achieve that , researchers converted the
CRISPR "recognition induced enzymatic signal" to an electrical signal, which was then used to detect the biomarkers for those viruses.
Dr Yifan Dai, a PhD candidate in the chemistry department at Case Western Reserve University and lead author told
Thailand Medical News via a phone interview, "This could someday become a simple, accurate and cost-effective point-of-care device for identifying different nucleic acid viruses, such as HPV or parvo from a single droplet of a blood sample. And it would also be extremely fast."
Dr Dai said existing tests for those viruses take three to five days for an accurate result and can be expensive, while the biosensor envisioned by Case Western Reserve researchers would provide accurate results in minutes.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control say that HPV is a common virus that can lead to six types of cancers later in life. Nearly 80 million Americans are infected with some type of HPV, spread through intimate skin-to-skin contact. Globally infection rates are in the hundreds of millions but diagnostic procedures are extremely limited at the moment.
Another virus, Parvovirus B19, or parvo, spreads through respiratory secretions, such as saliva or nasal mucus, when an infected person coughs or sneezes. The virus can present a range of symptoms, depending on a person's age and overall health. About two out of 10 people infected with this virus will have no symptoms. Others may have only a mild rash.
There are other viruses that the platform can be used to diagnose including the various herpes viruses, flu virus, HIV strains etc. The virus types are actually endless.
Unknown to many, the acronym
CRISPR stands for "clusters of regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats" and is shorthand for
CRISPR-Cas system, a specialized protein or enzyme that acts like a pair of molecular scissors, cutting specific strands or sequencing of DNA and thus short-circuiting the mutation.
Typically, genome editing involves changing those sequences, thereby changing the
genomic messages. This can be done by inserting a cut or break in the DNA and tricking a cell's natural DNA repair mechanisms into introducing the changes one wants, according to a LiveScience report.
The platform,
CRISPR-cas9, first used in 2016, was back in the headlines as news br
oke this week that scientists had created a new way to edit DNA, called "prime editing," that appears to make it even easier to precisely and safely rewrite genes, while
CRISPR had been successful mostly at cutting DNA.
Dr Dai and co-authors have coined the name E-
CRISPR to what they call an "electrochemical platform" that relies on the precision of the
CRISPR technique to identify and quantify viruses in the blood. What sounds complex is actually quite simple, Dr Dai said,
Dr Dai further commented, "The
CRISPR technique works so that it cuts all of the nonspecified single-strand DNA around it once the target is recognized, so we program to electrochemically probe this activity. No virus no cutting, it's that simple. And the opposite is true: If
CRISPR starts to cut, we know the virus is present."
The team is developing the first prototype of this new device which will be ready before the year end and are going into studies and trials by next year.
Reference: Dai, Y., Somoza, R. A., Wang, L., Welter, J. F., Li, Y., Caplan, A. I., & Liu, C. C. (2019). Exploring the Trans-Cleavage Activity of CRISPR-Cas12a (cpf1) for the Development of a Universal Electrochemical Biosensor. Angewandte Chemie International Edition. https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201913617
