Platforms of in vivo genome editing with inducible Cas9 for advanced cancer modeling

Summary

The emergence of CRISPR/Cas9 technology has dramatically advanced how we manipulate the genome. Regarding in vivo experiments, Cas9‐transgenic animals could provide efficient and complex genome editing. However, this potential has not been fully realized partly due to a lack of convenient platforms and limited examples of successful disease modeling. Here, we devised two doxycycline (Dox)‐inducible Cas9 platforms that efficiently conduct conditional genome editing at multiple loci in vitro and in vivo. In these platforms, we took advantage of a site‐specific multi‐segment cloning strategy for the rapid and easy integration of multiple sgRNAs. We found that a platform containing rtTA at the Rosa26 locus and TRE‐Cas9 together with multiple sgRNAs at the Col1a1 locus exhibited a higher efficiency of inducible insertions and deletions (indels) with minimal leaky editing. Using this platform, we succeeded to model Wilms' tumor and the progression of intestinal adenomas with multiple mutations including an activating mutation with a large genomic deletion. Collectively, the established platform should make complicated disease modeling in mouse easily attainable, extending the range of in vivo experiments in various biological fields including cancer research.

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