• Annalisa Lattanzi, Vasco Meneghini, Giulia Pavani, Fatima Amor, Sophie Ramadier, Tristan Felix, Chiara Antoniani, Cecile Masson, Olivier Alibeu, Ciaran Lee, Matthew H Porteus, Gang Bao, Mario Amendola, Fulvio Mavilio, and Annarita Miccio.
• Genethon, INSERM UMR951, Evry 91000, France.
• Mol. Ther. 2019 Jan 2; 27 (1): 137-150.

AbstractEditing the β-globin locus in hematopoietic stem cells is an alternative therapeutic approach for gene therapy of β-thalassemia and sickle cell disease. Using the CRISPR/Cas9 system, we genetically modified human hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) to mimic the large rearrangements in the β-globin locus associated with hereditary persistence of fetal hemoglobin (HPFH), a condition that mitigates the clinical phenotype of patients with β-hemoglobinopathies. We optimized and compared the efficiency of plasmid-, lentiviral vector (LV)-, RNA-, and ribonucleoprotein complex (RNP)-based methods to deliver the CRISPR/Cas9 system into HSPCs. Plasmid delivery of Cas9 and gRNA pairs targeting two HPFH-like regions led to high frequency of genomic rearrangements and HbF reactivation in erythroblasts derived from sorted, Cas9+ HSPCs but was associated with significant cell toxicity. RNA-mediated delivery of CRISPR/Cas9 was similarly toxic but much less efficient in editing the β-globin locus. Transduction of HSPCs by LVs expressing Cas9 and gRNA pairs was robust and minimally toxic but resulted in poor genome-editing efficiency. Ribonucleoprotein (RNP)-based delivery of CRISPR/Cas9 exhibited a good balance between cytotoxicity and efficiency of genomic rearrangements as compared to the other delivery systems and resulted in HbF upregulation in erythroblasts derived from unselected edited HSPCs.Copyright © 2018 The American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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