Prospects of CRISPR/Cas9 for HIV Elimination

The ease in design and manufacturing of CRISPR/Cas9 components has made it the lead gene editing tool for the scientific community, as reflected by the over 14,000 publications related to CRISPR since the description of the technology in 2012. Research in HIV is no exception and multiple groups are testing different approaches based on Cas9 toward the elimination of HIV. However, its application in reducing the HIV reservoir still faces significant challenges, including but not restricted to sgRNA design and delivery. Considering that HIV has been shown to be very resilient to single-target approaches, perhaps, a combinatorial approach including Cas9 could lead to a therapeutic reduction of the HIV reservoir in the nearer future.