Spotlight co-founder uses CRISPR screen to ID T cell regulator genes for cancer

Spotlight Therapeutics Inc. (Hayward, Calif.) co-founder Alexander Marson and colleagues at University of California San Francisco developed a CRISPR-based screen to identify genes that control T cell replication and immunosuppression, and used the results to design a cancer immunotherapy with improved efficacy.

In a paper published Thursday in Cell, the researchers describe a hybrid screen combining lentiviral delivery of single guide RNAs with CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9) protein electroporation (SLICE) to enable a genome-wide loss-of-function screen in primary human T cells. SLICE screens identified genetic regulators that controlled T cell proliferation and the ability of T cells to evade immunosuppressive tumor microenvironments...