Milan, 13 Jan. (Adnkronos Health) — Gene editing, the ‘cut and sew’ of DNA awarded with the Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2020, can represent «a permanent and advanced strategy for the treatment of heart disease, the first cause of disease and death in the world, and even to repair the data suffered by the heart after a heart attack». The hope of a new potentially life-saving application of the ‘molecular scissors’ Crispr-Cas9 comes from a study published by researchers members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in ‘Science’, the journal of the association.
Gene editing — recall the AAAS experts — has proven to be a promising therapeutic approach against some rare hereditary diseases. However, most gene-editing strategies focus on correcting specific mutations that occur only in small subgroups of patients and often before the disease sets in; Wider applications of the technique remain limited. In the new work, conducted for now on mice, Simon Lebek, Eric Olson and colleagues illustrate a use of Crispr-Cas9 potentially useful to treat a whole range of patients with heart disease.
In particular, the authors are targeting the so-called ischemia/reperfusion injury (IR), a type of tissue damage that can arise after several cardiovascular insults, including stroke and heart attack. Chronic hyperactivation of protein kinase IIδ Ca2 /calmodulin-dependent (CaMKIIδ) is known to cause several heart diseases in humans and mice, including Ir lesion.Oxidation of methionine residues promotes CaMKIIδ overactivation. Lebek and colleagues found that using adenine base modification with «Crispr-Cas9 to eliminate sites of oxidative activation of the CaMKIIδ gene in cardiomyocytes protected them from Ir lesions in mouse models.» The scientists also observed that injecting gene-editing reagents into mice soon after Ir injury allowed the animals to recover heart function after severe damage.
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