CRISPR-Cas antimicrobials: Challenges and future prospects

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) poses a serious threat to modern medicine and may render common infections untreatable. The discovery of new antibiotics has come to a relative standstill during the last decade 1, and developing novel approaches to tackle the spread of AMR genes will require significant efforts in the coming years 2. In 2014, several groups independently demonstrated how CRISPR-Cas (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats-CRISPR–associated), a bacterial immune system now widely used for genome editing, can selectively remove AMR genes from bacterial populations. Here, we discuss the current state of the field of CRISPR-Cas antimicrobials, the challenges ahead, and how they may be overcome.