Jinyu Zhang, Yi Zhang, Sushant Khanal, Dechao Cao, Juan Zhao, Xindi Dang, Lam Ngoc Thao Nguyen, Madison Schank, Xiao Y Wu, Yong Jiang, Shunbin Ning, Ling Wang, Mohamed El Gazzar, Jonathan P Moorman, Haitao Guo, Zhi Q Yao
The presence of hepatitis B virus (HBV) covalently closed circular (ccc) DNA (cccDNA), which serves as a template for viral replication and integration of HBV DNA into the host cell genome, sustains liver pathogenesis and constitutes an intractable barrier to the eradication of chronic HBV infection. The current antiviral therapy for HBV infection, using nucleos(t)ide analogues (NAs), can suppress HBV replication but cannot eliminate integrated HBV DNA and episomal cccDNA. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)/Cas9 is a powerful genetic tool that can edit integrated HBV DNA and minichromosomal cccDNA for gene therapy, but its expression and delivery require a viral vector, which poses safety concerns for therapeutic applications in humans...
July 2023: Journal of Medical Virology