CRISPR Claire Spicknall (Year 8) Science Faculty, The Illawarra Grammar School, Western Avenue, Mangerton, 2500 Introduction Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) technology was created in 1987 and became more widely used in 2012. CRISPR allows researchers to easily alter DNA sequences and modify gene function. The protein Cas9 (or "CRISPR-associated") is an enzyme that “acts like a pair of molecular scissors, capable of cutting strands of DNA” (Live Science, 2018). Essentially this means that CRISPR technology allows for scientists to edit and modify the DNA inside human cells. This report will focus on how CRISPR has been used to edit cells within the body to better locate and kill cancerous cells and the advantages and disadvantages to using CRISPR technology.
In a healthy body the cells grow, die, and are replaced in a controlled way, this process is called cell division. The genetic material of cells can be damaged by environmental or internal factors and can cause mutated cells to grow uncontrollably, this results in a mass of cancer cells or a tumour, this process is shown in Figure 1. If this is not managed it can then lead to metastatic cancer. This is when cancer cells separate from the original tumour and penetrate the circulatory system and spread through bloodstreams or lymph vessels. The cancer cells then reside on a new part of the body and form a new tumour or cancer cluster, typically on nearby organs or lymph nodes.
Metastatic Cancer CRISPR is a technology used to edit genes in diseases, this report will focus on CRISPR being used to treat metastatic cancer (stage IV cancer).
Figure 1 shows the abnormal growth of cancer cells and how it forms tumours (Cancer Council, N.D).
9
