Published in

American Association for the Advancement of Science, Science Advances, 16(8), 2022

DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abm8011

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Blood-brain barrier–penetrating single CRISPR-Cas9 nanocapsules for effective and safe glioblastoma gene therapy

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

We designed a unique nanocapsule for efficient single CRISPR-Cas9 capsuling, noninvasive brain delivery and tumor cell targeting, demonstrating an effective and safe strategy for glioblastoma gene therapy. Our CRISPR-Cas9 nanocapsules can be simply fabricated by encapsulating the single Cas9/sgRNA complex within a glutathione-sensitive polymer shell incorporating a dual-action ligand that facilitates BBB penetration, tumor cell targeting, and Cas9/sgRNA selective release. Our encapsulating nanocapsules evidenced promising glioblastoma tissue targeting that led to high PLK1 gene editing efficiency in a brain tumor (up to 38.1%) with negligible (less than 0.5%) off-target gene editing in high-risk tissues. Treatment with nanocapsules extended median survival time (68 days versus 24 days in nonfunctional sgRNA-treated mice). Our new CRISPR-Cas9 delivery system thus addresses various delivery challenges to demonstrate safe and tumor-specific delivery of gene editing Cas9 ribonucleoprotein for improved glioblastoma treatment that may potentially be therapeutically useful in other brain diseases.