• Lei Xu, Huan Yang, Yang Gao, Zeyu Chen, Liangfu Xie, Yulin Liu, Ying Liu, Xiaobao Wang, Hanwei Li, Weifeng Lai, Yuan He, Anzhi Yao, Liying Ma, Yiming Shao, Bin Zhang, Chengyan Wang, Hu Chen, and Hongkui Deng.
• Department of Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation, 307 Hospital of PLA, Beijing 100071, China; Cell and Gene Therapy Center, Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Beijing 100850, China.
• Mol. Ther. 2017 Aug 2; 25 (8): 1782-1789.

AbstractTransplantation of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) with a naturally occurring CCR5 mutation confers a loss of detectable HIV-1 in the patient, making ablation of the CCR5 gene in HSCs an ideal therapy for an HIV-1 cure. Although CCR5 disruption has been attempted in CD4+ T cells and hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPCs), efficient gene editing with high specificity and long-term therapeutic potential remains a major challenge for clinical translation. Here, we established a CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing system in human CD34+ HSPCs and achieved efficient CCR5 ablation evaluated in long-term reconstituted NOD/Prkdcscid/IL-2Rγnull mice. The CCR5 disruption efficiency in our system remained robust in secondary transplanted repopulating hematopoietic cells. More importantly, an HIV-1 resistance effect was observed as indicated by significant reduction of virus titration and enrichment of human CD4+ T cells. Hence, we successfully established a CRISPR/Cas9 mediated CCR5 ablating system in long-term HSCs, which confers HIV-1 resistance in vivo. Our study provides evidence for translating CCR5 gene-edited HSC transplantation for an HIV cure to the clinic.Copyright © 2017 The American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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