Research Advances in the Application of CRISPR/Cas9 Technology for Hepatocellular Carcinoma Therapy

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most prevalent types of cancer in the world and is extremely invasive, with few available treatments as today. Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9), short for CRISPR/Cas9, is a gene editing tool, derived from the natural defence system of bacteria against exogenous viruses, that has recently been widely under research. It involves a guide RNA and Cas9 protein from the Cas family, and cleaves double stranded DNA to inhibit genes. CRISPR/Cas9 technology could have groundbreaking impacts into curing hepatitis B virus (HBV), the virus that stands as the most common cause of HCC. This paper reviews the mechanism and function of the CRISPR/Cas9 system in detail, suggesting some methods by which CRISPR/Cas9 can be used to deactivate genes (targets) that cause cancer. This review discusses the challenges of the CRISPR/Cas9 technology at present and suggests further research direction as it is ultimately an innovative approach that holds great potential for cancer treatment.