Exploring the Potential of CRISPR/Cas9 Technology in Autoimmune Disease Management

Abstract

Autoimmune diseases are a group of diseases caused by the immune system mistakenly attacking its own tissues and cells. Autoimmune diseases are marked by the binding of autoantibodies to self-antigens, where the immune system mistakenly recognizes its own proteins, DNA or RNA as foreign substances and produces autoantibodies. There is a large inter-individual variation in the detection of autoimmune diseases, and in terms of treatment it is still only possible to alleviate the disease. But the development of gene editing technology, especially the CRISPR system, has made it possible to treat autoimmune diseases by gene editing using the CRISPR/Cas system. This research focuses on the application of CRISPR/Cas9 technology for the detection and treatment of autoimmune diseases. Relying on the high affinity of the dCas9 protein-sgRNA complex for specific sequences, abnormal nucleic acid sequences can be detected, and the use of the Cas12 system with exogenous ssDNA as a signal can make the results more obvious. In terms of therapy, according to previous experimental reports, the CRISPR/Cas9 system shows its potential in treating autoimmune diseases in three ways: directly knocking down the relevant disease-causing genes, modulating enhancers to activate or silence them by using CRISPR/dCas technology, and editing CAR T-cells to attack B-cells and plasma blasts by using CRISPR/dCas technology. This research will provide an in-depth discussion of these three aspects and their rationale, and make a discussion based on the current challenges of treating autoimmune diseases.