Biomarkers And Gene Therapy With CRISPR-Cas9 To Treat Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a partially heritable chronic autoimmune inflammatory disease characterized by the demyelination of neurons and axonal damage in the central nervous system.Treatment options such as antibody-mediated therapy, symptomatic therapy, and plasma exchange are partially effective in delaying or inhibiting the disease's progress; however, they have many drawbacks and are unsuitable for every MS patient.Many treatments and approaches are being developed to delay the disease progression.Biomarkers are one of those approaches.Biomarkers are regarded as an important indicator of MS and are used as drug targets.Finding highly heritable potential biomarker candidates is significant for the treatment and monitoring the progress of MS.Early diagnosis of MS is complicated and unreliable in most cases; biomarker studies are aiming to solve this problem by finding specific indicators that could distinguish types or other diseases from MS.Some of them are currently in clinical use and some promising candidates are still being studied.Another treatment option is gene therapy.The research focused on the heritability of MS shows that there are genetic factors in disease progression.Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) found more than 200 gene variants responsible for disease progression.Gene therapies using CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing techniques are being developed to target the most causative genes to reduce inflammation to decrease neurological symptoms of MS.Briefly, biomarkers, and gene therapy with CRISPR-Cas9 provide new insights for advancements like patient-specific treatments, and could provide high success rates in treatments in MS and other neurodegenerative disorders.