• Chiara Antoniani, Vasco Meneghini, Annalisa Lattanzi, Tristan Felix, Oriana Romano, Elisa Magrin, Leslie Weber, Giulia Pavani, Sara El Hoss, Ryo Kurita, Yukio Nakamura, Thomas J Cradick, Ante S Lundberg, Matthew Porteus, Mario Amendola, Wassim El Nemer, Marina Cavazzana, Fulvio Mavilio, and Annarita Miccio.
• Laboratory of Chromatin and Gene Regulation during Development, Imagine Institute, INSERM Unité Mixte de Recherche (UMR)1163, Paris, France.
• Blood. 2018 Apr 26; 131 (17): 1960-1973.

AbstractNaturally occurring, large deletions in the β-globin locus result in hereditary persistence of fetal hemoglobin, a condition that mitigates the clinical severity of sickle cell disease (SCD) and β-thalassemia. We designed a clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9) (CRISPR/Cas9) strategy to disrupt a 13.6-kb genomic region encompassing the δ- and β-globin genes and a putative γ-δ intergenic fetal hemoglobin (HbF) silencer. Disruption of just the putative HbF silencer results in a mild increase in γ-globin expression, whereas deletion or inversion of a 13.6-kb region causes a robust reactivation of HbF synthesis in adult erythroblasts that is associated with epigenetic modifications and changes in chromatin contacts within the β-globin locus. In primary SCD patient-derived hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells, targeting the 13.6-kb region results in a high proportion of γ-globin expression in erythroblasts, increased HbF synthesis, and amelioration of the sickling cell phenotype. Overall, this study provides clues for a potential CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing approach to the therapy of β-hemoglobinopathies.© 2018 by The American Society of Hematology.

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