Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute (ONJCRI) researchers gathered at last week’s CRISPR Down Under conference to share exciting advances in ‘gene editing technology’ that could revolutionise our understanding of cancer.
The conference was organised by a collaborative committee of scientists from ONJCRI, WEHI, Peter Mac, and the Peter Doherty Institute. The conference focused on a powerful tool called “CRISPR,” which allows researchers to make precise changes to DNA—the instruction manual inside every cell of our body.
The conference is Australia’s first event bringing together Australian CRISPR researchers, and ONJCRI scientists are among those at the frontier of this exciting technology.
Several ONJCRI researchers presented work using specialised versions of CRISPR. Professor Marco Herold and PhD student Wei Jin described models their team generated using this gene editing technology. Some genes act as instructions to make proteins, and other genes instead help control other genes.
Some of this team’s models were designed so that any of their genes can be “turned up” (activated), while others have genes that can be “turned off” (knocked down) on demand. Excitingly, these tools can now even be used together, to activate and knock down genes at the same time, in the same organism. This will help researchers understand what different genes do, and how they might contribute to cancer development.
Dr Teresa Sadras presented her work using a CRISPR activation approach to understand what genes drive relapse in leukaemia patients. Dr Christina Koenig also shared progress on CRISPR “base editing”—an even more precise form of gene editing which changes just a single letter in the DNA code, similar to fixing a typo in a book.
Dr Tirta (Mario) Djajawi described how CRISPR can be used to find genes that help cancer cells escape our immune system. By understanding this protection mechanism, scientists might develop treatments that make tumours more vulnerable to our body’s natural defences.
Our PhD students also used this conference opportunity to share their work.
Liam Neil gave a flash talk about using CRISPR to find ways to make aggressive breast cancer more susceptible to natural killer cells, a type of immune cell that fights cancer.
Akash Srivaths shared his PhD work in a poster presentation, using CRISPR to ‘screen’ an organism’s entire DNA sequence for genes that make colorectal cancers resistant to drugs, potentially leading to more effective treatments.
Andrew Li also presented a poster of his PhD project, where he also used a CRISPR screen across an organism’s entire DNA sequence to examine how cancer cells respond under pressure from immune cells.
Dr Yexuan Deng, who attended the conference, said: “It’s really great to see people developing CRISPR tools and novel technologies. It’s exciting to see lots of people doing different kinds of CRISPR screens to address different biological questions.”
In this growing field of research, scientists are working towards precisely understanding and potentially correcting the genetic errors that cause disease.
While many of these discoveries are still in early research stages using laboratory models, they offer hope for developing more targeted and effective treatments for various cancers in the future.
