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Genetic engineering

Peptide-mediated CRISPR engineering of cells

Nature Reviews Bioengineering volume 1, page 388 (2023)Cite this article

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CRISPR can be applied to eliminate or insert genes in cells, for example, to create chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells. However, delivering CRISPR to cells typically relies on electroporation, which may result in high cytotoxicity and requires costly equipment, which is not ideal for cell therapy pipelines. Now, writing in Nature Biomedical Engineering, Ross Wilson, Justin Eyquem, Alexander Marson and colleagues developed a simple and hardware-independent peptide-mediated delivery method for the CRISPR-mediated engineering of T cells.

To avoid T cell manipulation by electroporation, the researchers applied virus-mimicking peptides to deliver CRISPR to T cells. This approach, called peptide-enabled ribonucleoprotein delivery (PERC), involves the mixing of CRISPR ribonucleoprotein with a peptide that can carry the ribonucleoprotein across the cell membrane. The team first screened 37 amphiphilic peptides and evaluated their capacity to deliver CRISPR ribonucleoprotein into human primary T cells. Among the peptides screened, INF7-A5K-TAT was identified as the most potent in terms of gene editing without causing cytotoxicity. Importantly, the technology can also be applied for the genome editing of other cell types, including primary human B cells and natural killer cells.

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  1. Nature Reviews Bioengineering https://www.nature.com/natrevbioeng/

    Nesma El-Sayed Ibrahim

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  1. Nesma El-Sayed Ibrahim
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Correspondence to Nesma El-Sayed Ibrahim.

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Ibrahim, N.ES. Peptide-mediated CRISPR engineering of cells. Nat Rev Bioeng 1, 388 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44222-023-00079-9

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