Gene-editing of CCR5 for the Treatment of HIV: A Novel Therapeutic Approach

Abstract

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was thought to be the medical pandemic of the 21st century, infecting 77.3 million people and being the cause of the deaths of 34.5 million people. To date, various studies have deepened our understanding of the structure, variability, and replication of HIV, considered virological and immunological mechanisms associated with the infection and helped design new therapeutic approaches. Antiretroviral treatment has transmuted AIDS from a deadly condition specific to a prolonged, controllable disease. In 1996, CCR5 and CXCR4 were co-receptors for HIV-1 entrance. CCR5 is the most critical chemokine co-receptor for HIV-1 entry. In 2008, allogeneic transplantation of mutant CCR5-d32 homozygous stem cells into HIV-infected people resulted in ongoing viral control and maybe extinction of HIV. Since then, there has been a strong emphasis on expanding this method to a larger population and using gene-editing techniques like transcription activator-like effector nucleases, zinc finger nucleases and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats in hematopoietic stem cells to make subjects immune to HIV. This research aims to look at the use of gene-editing methods in allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation as a possible HIV treatment approach. Based on the literature, it is found that subjects infected with HIV who underwent gene-editing methods to edit the CCR5 gene on hematopoietic stem cells for 32 bp removal in the CCR5 gene have been proven to enhance positive results of the maximum number of patients.