A novel human T-cell platform to define biological effects of genome editing

NIH RePORTER · NIH · U01 · $609,968 · view on reporter.nih.gov ↗

Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY Genome editing technologies have extraordinary potential as new genomic medicines that address underlying genetic causes of human disease; however, it remains challenging to predict their long-term safety, because we do not know the consequences of potential side effects of genome editing such as off-target mutations or immunogenicity. Our long-term goal is to understand and predict such unintended biological effects to advance the development of safe and effective therapies. T-cells are an ideal cellular model because: 1) they are highly relevant as the most widely used cells for development of therapeutic genome editing strategies (such as cell-based treatments for HIV and cancer) and 2) mature T-cells encode a diverse T-cell receptor repertoire that can be exploited as built-in cellular barcodes for quantifying clonal expansion or depletion in response to specific treatments. We, therefore, propose the following specific aims: 1) to predict which unintended editing sites have biological effects on human T-cells by integrating large-scale genome-wide activity and epigenomic profiles with state-of-the-art deep learning models and 2) to develop a human primary T-cell platform to detect functional effects of genome editing by measuring clonal representation, off-target mutation frequencies, immunogenicity, or gene expression. If successful, our experimental and predictive framework will profoundly increase confidence in the safety of the next generation of promising genome editing therapies.

Key facts

NIH application ID
10434027
Project number
5U01AI157189-05
Recipient
ST. JUDE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH HOSPITAL
Principal Investigator
Shengdar Tsai
Activity code
U01
Funding institute
NIH
Fiscal year
2022
Award amount
$609,968
Award type
5
Project period
2018-09-12 → 2024-06-30