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Review
. 2016 Sep;135(9):1071-82.
doi: 10.1007/s00439-016-1686-2. Epub 2016 Jun 8.

Genome editing and the next generation of antiviral therapy

Daniel Stone  1 , Nixon Niyonzima  1   2 , Keith R Jerome  3   4
Affiliations
Review

Genome editing and the next generation of antiviral therapy

Daniel Stone et al. Hum Genet. 2016 Sep.

Abstract

Engineered endonucleases such as homing endonucleases (HEs), zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs), Tal-effector nucleases (TALENS) and the RNA-guided engineered nucleases (RGENs or CRISPR/Cas9) can target specific DNA sequences for cleavage, and are proving to be valuable tools for gene editing. Recently engineered endonucleases have shown great promise as therapeutics for the treatment of genetic disease and infectious pathogens. In this review, we discuss recent efforts to use the HE, ZFN, TALEN and CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing platforms as antiviral therapeutics. We also discuss the obstacles facing gene-editing antiviral therapeutics as they are tested in animal models of disease and transition towards human application.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Generation of endonuclease-resistant virus. Upon endonuclease cleavage of an essential viral gene the DNA double strand break can be repaired perfectly (A), mutated to yield a replication incompetent virus (B), mutated to yield a treatment-resistant virus (C), or treated with a second endonuclease to prevent treatment resistance (D)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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