Frontiers of Medicine 2018;12(5):497-508

doi:10.1007/s11684-017-0572-1

Genome editing for the treatment of tumorigenic viral infections and virus-related carcinomas.

Lan YU 1 ; Xun TIAN 1 ; Chun GAO 1 ; Ping WU 1 ; Liming WANG 1 ; Bei FENG 1 ; Xiaomin LI 1 ; Hui WANG 1 ; Ding MA 2 ; Zheng HU 3 4

Affiliations

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Keywords

delivery method; genome-editing tools; off-target effect; tumorigenic virus; virus-related carcinoma

Country

China

Language

English

Abstract

Viral infections cause at least 10%-15% of all human carcinomas. Over the last century, the elucidation of viral oncogenic roles in many cancer types has provided fundamental knowledge on carcinogenetic mechanisms and established a basis for the early intervention of virus-related cancers. Meanwhile, rapidly evolving genome-editing techniques targeting viral DNA/RNA have emerged as novel therapeutic strategies for treating virus-related carcinogenesis and have begun showing promising results. This review discusses the recent advances of genome-editing tools for treating tumorigenic viruses and their corresponding cancers, the challenges that must be overcome before clinically applying such genome-editing technologies, and more importantly, the potential solutions to these challenges.