Scientists Just Removed HIV from Human Immune Cells Using CRISPR Gene-Editing

Using the much-touted CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing method, scientists have demonstrated how they can edit HIV out of human immune cell DNA, and in doing so, can prevent the reinfection of unedited cells too.

If you haven’t heard of the CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technique before, get ready to hear a whole lot more about it in 2016, because it’s set to revolutionise how we investigate and treat the root causes of genetic disease. It allows scientists to narrow in on a specific gene, and cut-and-paste parts of the DNA to change its function.

CRISPR/Cas9 is what researchers in the UK have recently gotten approval to use on human embryos so they can figure out how to improve IVF success rates and reduce miscarriages, and it’s what Chinese scientists were caught using in 2015 to tweak human embryos on the down-low.

Earlier this year, scientists started using CRISPR/Cas9 to successfully treat a genetic disease – Duchenne muscular dystrophy – in living mammals for the first time, and now it’s showing real potential as a possible treatment for HIV in the future.

The technique works by guiding ‘scissor-like’ proteins to targeted sections of DNA within a cell, and then prompting them to alter or ‘edit’ them in some way.CRISPR refers to a specific repeating sequence of DNA extracted from a prokaryote – a single-celled organism such as bacteria – which pairs up with an RNA-guided enzyme called Cas9.

...http://futurism.com/scientists-just-removed-hiv-human-immune-cells-using-crispr-gene-editing/