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Review
. 2021 Apr;592(7853):195-204.
doi: 10.1038/s41586-021-03191-1. Epub 2021 Apr 7.

The NIH Somatic Cell Genome Editing program

Krishanu Saha #  1   2   3   4 Erik J Sontheimer #  5 P J Brooks  6 Melinda R Dwinell  7 Charles A Gersbach  8 David R Liu  9   10   11 Stephen A Murray  12 Shengdar Q Tsai  13 Ross C Wilson  14 Daniel G Anderson  15   16   17 Aravind Asokan  8   18 Jillian F Banfield  14   19 Krystof S Bankiewicz  20 Gang Bao  21 Jeff W M Bulte  22   23 Nenad Bursac  8 Jarryd M Campbell  24 Daniel F Carlson  24 Elliot L Chaikof  25 Zheng-Yi Chen  26   27   28 R Holland Cheng  29 Karl J Clark  30 David T Curiel  31 James E Dahlman  32 Benjamin E Deverman  33 Mary E Dickinson  34 Jennifer A Doudna  14   35   36   37   38   39   40 Stephen C Ekker  30 Marina E Emborg  41   42 Guoping Feng  43 Benjamin S Freedman  44   45   46   47 David M Gamm  48   49 Guangping Gao  50 Ionita C Ghiran  51 Peter M Glazer  52 Shaoqin Gong  53   54   48 Jason D Heaney  55 Jon D Hennebold  56 John T Hinson  57 Anastasia Khvorova  58 Samira Kiani  59 William R Lagor  34 Kit S Lam  60 Kam W Leong  61 Jon E Levine  42 Jennifer A Lewis  62 Cathleen M Lutz  12 Danith H Ly  63 Samantha Maragh  64 Paul B McCray Jr  65 Todd C McDevitt  66   67 Oleg Mirochnitchenko  68 Ryuji Morizane  69 Niren Murthy  14   70 Randall S Prather  71 John A Ronald  72 Subhojit Roy  73 Sushmita Roy  53   54   48   74 Venkata Sabbisetti  75 W Mark Saltzman  76 Philip J Santangelo  32 David J Segal  60 Mary Shimoyama  77 Melissa C Skala  53   48   78 Alice F Tarantal  79   80   81   82 John C Tilton  83 George A Truskey  8 Moriel Vandsburger  70 Jonathan K Watts  58 Kevin D Wells  71 Scot A Wolfe  84 Qiaobing Xu  85 Wen Xue  58 Guohua Yi  86 Jiangbing Zhou  87 SCGE Consortium
Affiliations
Review

The NIH Somatic Cell Genome Editing program

Krishanu Saha et al. Nature. 2021 Apr.

Abstract

The move from reading to writing the human genome offers new opportunities to improve human health. The United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) Somatic Cell Genome Editing (SCGE) Consortium aims to accelerate the development of safer and more-effective methods to edit the genomes of disease-relevant somatic cells in patients, even in tissues that are difficult to reach. Here we discuss the consortium's plans to develop and benchmark approaches to induce and measure genome modifications, and to define downstream functional consequences of genome editing within human cells. Central to this effort is a rigorous and innovative approach that requires validation of the technology through third-party testing in small and large animals. New genome editors, delivery technologies and methods for tracking edited cells in vivo, as well as newly developed animal models and human biological systems, will be assembled-along with validated datasets-into an SCGE Toolkit, which will be disseminated widely to the biomedical research community. We visualize this toolkit-and the knowledge generated by its applications-as a means to accelerate the clinical development of new therapies for a wide range of conditions.

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Conflict of interest statement

K.S. receives sponsored research support from Spotlight Therapeutics. E.J.S. is a co-founder and advisor of Intellia Therapeutics. C.A.G. is a co-founder of Tune Therapeutics, Element Genomics and Locus Biosciences, and an advisor to Sarepta Therapeutics, Levo Therapeutics and Iveric Bio. D.R.L. is a co-founder or founder and scientific advisor of Editas Medicine, Pairwise Plants, Beam Therapeutics and Prime Medicine. S.Q.T. is a member of the scientific advisory board of Kromatid, Inc. D.G.A. is a co-founder of CRISPR Therapeutics, Sigilon, Verseau, VasoRx and Orna, and a consultant for Translate Bio and Obsidian Therapeutics. A.A. is a co-founder of StrideBio and TorqueBio, and an advisor to AstraZeneca, Sarepta Therapeutics, Gemini Therapeutics and BridgeBio. J.F.B. is a co-founder of Metagenomi. J.W.M.B. receives research support from NovaDip Biosciences, Philips Healthcare and Weinberg Medical Physics. D.F.C. and J.C. are employees and shareholders in Recombinetics, Inc. J.E.D. is a co-founder of Guide Therapeutics. K.J.C. is a co-founder of Recombinetics, Inc. and LifEngine Technologies. B.E.D. is on the scientific advisory board of Tevard Biosciences. J.A.D. is a co-founder of Caribou Biosciences, Editas Medicine, Scribe Therapeutics, Intellia Therapeutics and Mammoth Biosciences; a scientific advisory board member of Caribou Biosciences, Intellia Therapeutics, eFFECTOR Therapeutics, Scribe Therapeutics, Mammoth Biosciences, Synthego, Algen Biotechnologies, Felix Biosciences and Inari; a Director at Johnson & Johnson; and has research projects sponsored by Biogen, Pfizer, AppleTree Partners and Roche. S.C.E. is co-founder and chief executive officer of LifEngine Technologies, co-founder of LEAH Labs and chief scientific officer of Mettaforge Therapeutics. D.M.G. is a co-founder and chief scientific advisor for Opsis Therapeutics and holds equity in this company, and also receives sponsored research support from Ascidian Therapeutics. G.G. is a scientific co-founder of Voyager Therapeutics, Adrenas Therapeutics and Aspa Therapeutics. P.M.G. is a co-founder of Cybrexa Therapeutics and Delmab Bio and an advisor to pHLIP, Inc. P.B.M. is on the scientific advisory board and receives support for sponsored research from Spirovant Sciences, Inc. S.K. is the chief scientific officer and co-founder of SafeGen Therapeutics. W.M.S. is a co-founder of and receives research support from Stradefy Biosciences. J.K.W. is a consultant for Flagship Pioneering.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1. Tools for editing the genomes of cells within the body.
Activities of the SCGE Consortium converge on editing the genome of cells inside the human body. a, Targets of the genome editors (right) range from DNA within the nucleus of a cell to other nucleic acids elsewhere within a cell, such as DNA within the mitochondria (mtDNA) or RNA in the cytoplasm. Targets of epigenomic editors (left) produce targeted alteration of the chromatin structure—including remodelling, modification of the 3D structure and the direct modification of histones or DNA—without editing the DNA or RNA sequence. Approaches to editing cells outside of the body, as well as germline editing in embryos, are not directly supported by the SCGE Consortium, nor are strategies for gene augmentation through the addition of exogenous DNA. b, Interoperable tools assembled into an SCGE Toolkit will be disseminated to accelerate the translation of safe and effective genome-editing therapeutics into the clinic. Tools encompass several categories: newly developed genome editors, delivery technologies, reporter-animal systems, and human biological systems.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2. New genome editors in development.
Major classes of genome editors include nucleases, base editors (BE), prime editors, PNAs, RNA editors and epigenome editors. The development of new editors involves mining metagenomic datasets and building upon existing editors, in part by tuning them for increased precision and accuracy. DNMT, DNA methyltransferase; Acr, anti-CRISPR protein; RT, reverse transcriptase; DN1S: dominant-negative mutant of tumour suppressor p53-binding protein 1, 53BP1; TALE-fusions, transcription activator-like effector-fusion with nucleases or cytidine deaminases (DddA).

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