CRISPR: What's next?

CRISPR-Cas has become the new face of modern genetic engineering in recent years. The revolutionary development of CRISPR-Cas technology has made gene/genome editing dramatically easier, cheaper and more flexible. CRISPR-Cas technology has quickly spread through research labs around the world, helping researchers to better understand disease mechanisms, and offering great promise for medical, biotechnological and agricultural applications. However, despite great advances, the CRISPR-Cas technology still faces problems regarding precision efficiency (off-target cutting), making its use for in vivo gene therapy (on somatic cells) more delicate. This session will feature ERC-funded research that addresses the challenges of CRISPR-Cas technology using different approaches: (i) tackling the specificity issue by studying other types of CRISPR-Cas systems with improved nucleic acid detection accuracy; (ii) replacing the nuclease part of the system either with different nucleases or instead using modified site-specific recombinases; (iii) studying a diverse and understudied group of restriction enzymes that are sensitive to epigenetic modifications.