The Potential Revolution of Cancer Treatment with CRISPR Technology

Immuno-oncology (IO) and targeted therapies, such as small molecule inhibitors, have changed the landscape of cancer treatment and prognosis; however, durable responses have been difficult to achieve due to tumor heterogeneity, development of drug resistance, and adverse effects that limit dosing and prolonged drug use. To improve upon the current medicinal armamentarium, there is an urgent need for new ways to understand, reverse, and treat carcinogenesis. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-CRISPR-associated protein (Cas) 9 is a powerful and efficient tool for genome editing that has shown significant promise for developing new therapeutics. While CRISPR/Cas9 has been successfully used for pre-clinical cancer research, its use in the clinical setting is still in an early stage of development. The purpose of this review is to describe the CRISPR technology and to provide an overview of its current applications and future potential as cancer therapies.