In transplantation, the ever-increasing number of an organ's demand and long-term graft dysfunction constitute some of the major problems. Therefore, alternative solutions to increase the quantity and quality of the organ supply for transplantation are desired. On this subject, revolutionary Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) technology holds enormous potential for the scientific community with its expanding toolbox. In this minireview, we summarize the history and mechanism of CRISPR/Cas9 systems and explore its potential applications in cellular- and organ-level transplantation. The last part of this review includes future opportunities as well as the challenges in the transplantation field.
Keywords: animal models: porcine; basic (laboratory) research/science; genomics; immunosuppression/immune modulation; molecular biology; tolerance: chimerism; translational research/science; xenoantigen; xenotransplantation.
© 2020 The American Society of Transplantation and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons.