CRISPR in cancer biology and therapy

Over the past decade, CRISPR has become as much a verb as it is an acronym, transforming biomedical research and providing entirely new approaches for dissecting all facets of cell biology. In cancer research, CRISPR and related tools have offered a window into previously intractable problems in our understanding of cancer genetics, the noncoding genome and tumour heterogeneity, and provided new insights into therapeutic vulnerabilities. Here, we review the progress made in the development of CRISPR systems as a tool to study cancer, and the emerging adaptation of these technologies to improve diagnosis and treatment. The advent of CRISPR technologies has enabled programmable nucleic acid editing in mammalian cells. In this Review, Katti et al. outline the enormous progress that has been made in the application of CRISPR tools to the study of cancer and also describe the potential use of CRISPR systems in clinical cancer management including diagnosis and treatment.