Interesting use of CRISPR.........
For millions of sufferers, there is nothing more debilitating than chronic back or joint pain. It can feel like a lifetime of misery.
But researchers led by University of Utah bioengineering assistant professor Robby Bowles have discovered a way to curb chronic pain by modulating genes that reduce tissue- and cell-damaging inflammation.
“This has applications for many inflammatory-driven diseases,” Bowles says. “It could be applied for arthritis or to therapeutic cells that are being delivered to inflammatory environments that need to be protected from inflammation.”
The team’s discovery was published in a new paper this month, “CRISPR-Based Epigenome Editing of Cytokine Receptors for the Promotion of Cell Survival and Tissue Deposition in Inflammatory Environments,” in a special issue of Tissue Engineering. University of Utah bioengineering doctoral student, Niloofar Farhang, co-authored the study, which is a collaborative project between the University of Utah, Duke University and Washington University in St. Louis.
In chronic back pain, for example, slipped or herniated discs are a result of damaged tissue when inflammation causes cells to create molecules that break down tissue. Typically, inflammation is nature’s way of alerting the immune system to repair tissue or tackle infection. But chronic inflammation can instead lead to tissue degeneration and pain.