Many of the world’s most common or deadly human pathogens are RNA-based viruses—Ebola, Zika and flu, for example—and most have no FDA-approved treatments. A team led by researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has now turned a CRISPR RNA-cutting enzyme into an antiviral that can be programmed to detect and destroy RNA-based viruses in human cells.
Researchers have previously adapted the Cas13 enzyme as a tool to cut and edit human RNA and as a diagnostic to detect the presence of viruses, bacteria, or other targets. This study is one of the first to harness Cas13, or any CRISPR system, as an antiviral in cultured human cells.
The researchers combined Cas13’s antiviral activity with its diagnostic capability to create a single system that may one day be used to both diagnose and treat a viral infection, including infections caused by new and emerging viruses. Their system, called CARVER (Cas13-Assisted Restriction of Viral Expression and Readout), is described today in Molecular Cell.
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