Utilization of Lipid Nanoparticles to Show Proof-Of-Concept of Gene-Editing of Lung Cells for Future Studies Regarding Cystic Fibrosis
Cystic Fibrosis is a genetic disorder that causes severe damage to the lungs, digestive system and other organs. Lipid nanoparticle (LNP) technology has recently seen promising results in transfecting and delivering cargo to cells. In this study, LNPs were used to study whether an LNP can deliver Cas9-RNA cargo to lung cells for successful editing of unwanted DNA. A basic C12-200 lipid formulation with a positive charge was used as a baseline formulation and future studies will work to optimize this formulation for transfecting lung cells. The LNPs were used to deliver a Cas9-guideRNA complex to the H1299 cell line which is a human non-small cell lung carcinoma cell line. H1299s were used to resemble lung cells and prove that the LNP was able to successfully transfect lung cells. When the LNP transfects the cell, the Cas9-guideRNA complex travels to the nucleus of the cell. The guideRNA encodes for the DNA strand in the nucleus that needs to be edited, and once the DNA is found, the Cas9 cuts out that section of DNA. Although the C12-200 formulation was out-performed by the CRISPRmax commercial agent, it still successfully edited less than 50% of the GFP+ cells. It is also to be noted that the CRISPRmax commercial agent has shown to be more toxic than the LNP formulations, which would put patients at health risk. The overall study showed proof-of-concept that LNPs can successfully transfect a lung cell line and edit out genes using CRISPR Cas9 technology.
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