The Potential Use of the CRISPR-Cas System for HIV-1 Gene Therapy

Figure 1

Overview of the CRISPR-Cas strategy to interfere on the HIV-1 infection cycle. A: use of the CRISPR-Cas system to introduce loss-of-function mutations in the CCR5 and/or CXCR4 coreceptors in several cell types; B: inhibition of virus-cell invasion, reverse transcription, and integration by Cas and gRNA stable expression from the host cell genome; C: inhibition of viral replication through targeting gRNAs to different sites in the HIV-1 genome, including LTR, gag, pol, tat, and rev; D: inactivation of viral genetic material prior to integration into host DNA by transductions with Cas9-NLS or Cas9-delNLS and gRNA, whose targets are the R and U5 regions of LTR; E: rupture of the proviral genome from latent reservoirs with the LTR region as the main target, or by targeting other viral genes, thus modulating several HIV-1 characteristics and its infectious capacity.