KLIPP Therapeutics
Overview
KLIPP Tx is an an exciting and innovative new concept in cancer therapeutics developed by our friend, colleague, and frequent collaborator, Dr. Mats Ljungman. The core concept is that nearly all human cancers have genomic structural variants (SVs) unique to just that tumor, which provide a potential therapeutic intervention if those SV junctions could be specifically targeted with CRISPR.
Targeting SV junctions with KLIPP. A CRISPR-guided nuclease breaks chromosomes in cancer cells specifically at tumor-specific SV junctions. Project and image courtesy of Mats Ljugnman.
Targeting SV junctions with KLIPP. A CRISPR-guided nuclease breaks chromosomes in cancer cells specifically at tumor-specific SV junctions. Project and image courtesy of Mats Ljugnman.
A central need in KLIPP is efficiently finding well-behaved SV junctions and characterizing them at the base-pair level so that guide RNAs can be designed. Characterizing SV junctions is something the Wilson lab does well, so we are helping coordinate the bioinformatics efforts, just one part of this multi-disciplinary team.
We all hope the initial proof of principle studies Mats has reported can become a viable and important therapeutic option for patients.