Abstract
Being the most important immune-responsive cell type of the CNS, microglia always glorify the so-called crossroad of Neurology, Immunology and Pharmacology. As microglial activation is a hallmark of different neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND), Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), etc., selective targeting of microglial cell signaling may be a valid option to control these neurodegenerative disorders with lesser side effects. This is particularly important as no effective therapies are available against these diseases and available neuroimmune modulators are known to target multiple cell types in a non-cell-specific manner. How we can achieve such specificity? A newly-developed cutting-edge molecular biology tool is rocking biomedical research in recent years so much so that it has already come under major lawsuits between the University of California Berkeley and the MIT-Harvard Broad Institute regarding its ownership rights, probably halting the Nobel committee to announce the most coveted prize to its owners. It is none other than Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR). In nutshell, the Cas9 enzyme has been paired with the bacterial immune system, CRISPR, to ultimately turn CRISPR/Cas9 as an effective genome editor. Therefore, this special issue has been devoted to highlight some of the recent discoveries on CRISPR/Cas9 in neurodegenerative disorders and explain these discoveries in the light of neuroimmune pharmacology.
References
Bellizzi A, Ahye N, Jalagadugula G, Wollebo HS (2019) A broad application of CRISPR Cas9 in infectious diseases of central nervous system. J NeuroImmune Pharmacol. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11481-019-09878-7
Campbell LA, Richie CT, Maggirwar NS, Harvey BK (2019) Cas9 Ribonucleoprotein complex delivery: methods and applications for Neuroinflammation. J NeuroImmune Pharmacol. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11481-019-09856-z
Gendelman HE, Mosley RL (2015) A perspective on roles played by innate and adaptive immunity in the pathobiology of neurodegenerative disorders. J NeuroImmune Pharmacol 10:645–650
Han H, Huang W, Du W, Shen Q, Yang Z, Li MD, Chang SL (2019) Involvement of interferon regulatory factor 7 in Nicotine's suppression of antiviral immune responses. J NeuroImmune Pharmacol. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11481-019-09845-2
Li W, Tong HI, Gorantla S, Poluektova LY, Gendelman HE, Lu Y (2016) Neuropharmacologic approaches to restore the Brain's microenvironment. J NeuroImmune Pharmacol 11:484–494
Luo J, Padhi P, Jin H, Anantharam V, Zenitsky G, Wang Q, Willette AA, Kanthasamy A, Kanthasamy AG (2019) Utilization of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system to dissect Neuroinflammatory and Neuropharmacological mechanisms in Parkinson's disease. J NeuroImmune Pharmacol. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11481-019-09844-3
Perry VH, Nicoll JA, Holmes C (2010) Microglia in neurodegenerative disease. Nat Rev Neurol 6:193–201
Raikwar SP, Kikkeri NS, Sakuru R, Saeed D, Zahoor H, Premkumar K, Mentor S, Thangavel R, Dubova I, Ahmed ME, Selvakumar GP, Kempuraj D, Zaheer S, Iyer SS, Zaheer A (2019) Next generation precision medicine: CRISPR-mediated genome editing for the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders. J NeuroImmune Pharmacol. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11481-019-09849-y
Saha RN, Pahan K (2006) Regulation of inducible nitric oxide synthase gene in glial cells. Antioxid Redox Signal 8:929–947
Selvakumar GP, Ahmed ME, Raikwar SP, Thangavel R, Kempuraj D, Dubova I, Saeed D, Zahoor H, Premkumar K, Zaheer S, Iyer S, Zaheer A (2019) CRISPR/Cas9 editing of glia maturation factor regulates mitochondrial dynamics by attenuation of the NRF2/HO-1 dependent ferritin activation in glial cells. J NeuroImmune Pharmacol. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11481-019-09833-6
Stone DK, Reynolds AD, Mosley RL, Gendelman HE (2009) Innate and adaptive immunity for the pathobiology of Parkinson's disease. Antioxid Redox Signal 11:2151–2166
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by merit awards from Veteran Affairs (I01BX003033 & I01BX005002) and grants (AG060431 & NS108025) from NIH. Moreover, Dr. Pahan is the recipient of a Research Career Scientist Award (1IK6 BX004982) from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of Interests
None.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Pahan, K. A Broad Application of CRISPR Cas9 in Infectious, Inflammatory and Neurodegenerative Diseases. J Neuroimmune Pharmacol 14, 534–536 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11481-019-09889-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11481-019-09889-4