Biosafety materials: Ushering in a new era of infectious disease diagnosis and treatment with the CRISPR/Cas system

Yuquan Zhang; Ziyue Li; Julien Milon Essola; Kun Ge; Xuyan Dai; Huining He; Haihua Xiao; Yuhua Weng; Yuanyu Huang

doi:10.1016/j.bsheal.2022.03.010

Biosafety materials: Ushering in a new era of infectious disease diagnosis and treatment with the CRISPR/Cas system

Biosaf Health. 2022 Apr;4(2):70-78. doi: 10.1016/j.bsheal.2022.03.010. Epub 2022 Mar 14.

Authors

Yuquan Zhang¹, Ziyue Li¹, Julien Milon Essola¹, Kun Ge², Xuyan Dai³, Huining He⁴, Haihua Xiao⁵, Yuhua Weng¹, Yuanyu Huang^{1

6}

Affiliations

¹ School of Life Science, School of Medical Technology, Advanced Research Institute of Multidisciplinary Science, Key Laboratory of Molecular Medicine and Biotherapy, Key Laboratory of Medical Molecule Science and Pharmaceutics Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China.
² Key Laboratory of Analytical Science and Technology of Hebei Province, College of Chemistry and Environmental Science, Key Laboratory of Medicinal Chemistry and Molecular Diagnosis of the Ministry of Education, Hebei University, Baoding 071000, China.
³ Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha 410128, China.
⁴ Tianjin Key Laboratory on Technologies Enabling Development of Clinical Therapeutics and Diagnostics, School of Pharmacy, Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin 300070, China.
⁵ Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Science, State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physical and Chemistry, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing 100190, China.
⁶ School of Materials and the Environment, Beijing Institute of Technology, Zhuhai 519085, China.

Abstract

Despite multiple virus outbreaks over the past decade, including the devastating coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the lack of accurate and timely diagnosis and treatment technologies has wreaked havoc on global biosecurity. The clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated proteins (Cas) system has the potential to address these critical needs for tackling infectious diseases to detect viral nucleic acids and inhibit viral replication. This review summarizes how the CRISPR/Cas system is being utilized for the treatment and diagnosis of infectious diseases with the help of biosafety materials and highlights the design principle and in vivo and in vitro efficacy of advanced biosafety materials used to deal with virus attacks.

Keywords: Biosafety materials; CRISPR/Cas; Diagnosis; Infectious disease; SARS-CoV-2.

Publication types

Review