Biosafety materials: Ushering in a new era of infectious disease diagnosis and treatment with the CRISPR/Cas system

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bsheal.2022.03.010

This article forms part of a special issue - Advanced Biosafety Materials for Prevention and Theranostics of Biosafety Issues – covering the rapid detection and elimination of pathogenic microorganisms and the control of infectious diseases. For the full issue content see: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/biosafety-and-health/vol/4/issue/2

Despite multiple virus outbreaks over the past decade, including the devastating coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the lack of accurate and timely diagnosis and treatment technologies has wreaked havoc on global biosecurity. The clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated proteins (Cas) system has the potential to address these critical needs for tackling infectious diseases to detect viral nucleic acids and inhibit viral replication.

In this review the authors summarize how the CRISPR/Cas system is being utilized for the treatment and diagnosis of infectious diseases with the help of biosafety materials and highlights the design principle and in vivo and in vitro efficacy of advanced biosafety materials used to deal with virus attacks.

Highlights

• CRISPR/Cas systems open up a unique avenue for infectious disease treatment and diagnosis.
• Biosafety materials have obvious advantages over viral vectors and are urgently needed for in vivo CRISPR/Cas system delivery.
• Biosafety materials need to be reasonably designed to enable CRISPR/Cas system to enhance precise gene regulation and move forward in clinical research and application.

Keywords: Biosafety materials, CRISPR/Cas, SARS-CoV-2, Diagnosis, Infectious disease

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Biosafety and Health is sponsored by the Chinese Medical Association, managed by National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC).

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CiteScore: 4.8

ISSN 2590-0536

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Article reference: Yuquan Zhang, Ziyue Li, Julien Milon Essola, Kun Ge, Xuyan Dai, Huining He, Haihua Xiao, Yuhua Weng, Yuanyu Huang, Biosafety materials: Ushering in a new era of infectious disease diagnosis and treatment with the CRISPR/Cas system, Biosafety and Health, Volume 4, Issue 2, 2022, Pages 70-78, ISSN 2590-0536, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bsheal.2022.03.010.