Author(s) :

Levi Osman.

Volume/Issue :

Abstract :

Approximately 1 in 200 individuals is affected by mutations in either BRCA1 or BRCA2, which increase the lifetime risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer by around 5 times. However, current treatment options for BRCA-mutated cancers present major limitations due to the risk of both resistance and recurrence in certain cancer therapies. Approximately 40% of BRCA-mutated cancers acquire secondary resistance mutations that restore homologous recombination function. Similarly, 40-50% of BRCA-mutated cancers develop resistance to PARP inhibitors, another option for cancer treatment. This is further exemplified by the fact that platinum-based chemotherapy drugs like cisplatin are often highly toxic to the body. To address these limitations, alternative systems such as CRISPR-Cas9 offer a promising solution, as they could lower the risk of resistance and increase treatment efficacy. Overall, combining therapies such as PARP inhibitors or immunotherapy with CRISPR in BRCA-mutated cancers has yielded promising results not only in increasing the efficiency of treatments—the time it takes for them to show significant results—but also improving their efficacy. Due to the promising results of these combinations, research is being conducted with larger studies to investigate and prove the safety of these treatments. to investigate larger studies that will prove the safety of these treatments. Therefore, this paper examines the benefits of combining CRISPR-Cas9 with existing therapies to address the current limitations of BRCA-mutated cancer treatments.