Commentary – CRISPR-based techniques: Cas9, Cas13 and their applications in the era of COVID-19

S. Zaami, R. Piergentili, E. Marinelli, G. Montanari Vergallo

Department of Anatomical Histological, Forensic and Orthopedic Sciences, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. enrico.marinelli@uniroma1.it

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• Infectious Diseases

The CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats)/Cas9 (CRISPR-associated protein 9) system enables scientists to edit diverse genome types with relative ease, with the aim – in the near future – to prevent future human beings from developing genetic diseases. The new opportunities arising from the system are broad-ranging and revolutionary, but such prospects have also been the cause for alarm throughout the international scientific community. The authors have laid out a review of the trials carried out so far in terms of genome editing, for the ultimate purpose of weighing implications and criticisms. We feel that possible valuable alternatives, such as induced pluripotent stem cells should not be overlooked.

 

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