CRISPR-SONIC: targeted somatic oncogene knock-in enables rapid in vivo cancer modeling
Mou, Haiwei ; Ozata, Deniz M ; Smith, Jordan L. ; Sheel, Ankur ; Kwan, Suet-Yan ; Hough, Soren ; Kucukural, Alper ; Kennedy, Zachary ; Cao, Yueying ; Xue, Wen
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Abstract
CRISPR/Cas9 has revolutionized cancer mouse models. Although loss-of-function genetics by CRISPR/Cas9 is well-established, generating gain-of-function alleles in somatic cancer models is still challenging because of the low efficiency of gene knock-in. Here we developed CRISPR-based Somatic Oncogene kNock-In for Cancer Modeling (CRISPR-SONIC), a method for rapid in vivo cancer modeling using homology-independent repair to integrate oncogenes at a targeted genomic locus. Using a dual guide RNA strategy, we integrated a plasmid donor in the 3'-UTR of mouse beta-actin, allowing co-expression of reporter genes or oncogenes from the beta-actin promoter. We showed that knock-in of oncogenic Ras and loss of p53 efficiently induced intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma in mice. Further, our strategy can generate bioluminescent liver cancer to facilitate tumor imaging. This method simplifies in vivo gain-of-function genetics by facilitating targeted integration of oncogenes.
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Genome Med. 2019 Apr 16;11(1):21. doi: 10.1186/s13073-019-0627-9. Link to article on publisher's site