CRISPR knockouts to help us understand complex relationships between drug targets
CRISPR knockouts to help us understand complex relationships between drug targets
Jason Sheltzer’s 2019 research caused the therapeutics industry to realize how often we don’t actually understand the mechanism of action of many types of cancers and corresponding successful cancer therapeutics. We’ve learned that diseases are complex and can often target multiple proteins at once, for example.
Multi-plexed gene knockouts via CRISPR are one recent innovation that can help us understand these dynamics much more effectively. These tools also allow us to more quickly understand the complex dynamics between a number of targets, and repurpose data from drug targets that had passed safety but not demonstrated efficacy. While drug repurposing has been around for a while, we believe that developing multi-target drugs, and the aid of tools like multiplexed knockouts, we will see significant computational efficacy at developing drugs.
