A snapshot of gene therapy in Latin America

CRISPR/Cas patents and health-related publications in South America

CRISPR/Cas is being increasingly used for various applications. However, different countries introduce new technologies at different paces and purposes. This study reviews research progress using the CRISPR/Cas system in South America, focusing on health-related applications. The PubMed database was used to identify relevant articles about gene editing with CRISPR/Cas, whereas patents were searched in the Patentscope database. In addition, ClinicalTrials.gov was used to find information on active and recruiting clinical trials. A total of 668 non-duplicated articles (extracted from PubMed) and 225 patents (not all health-related) were found. One hundred ninety-two articles on health-related applications of CRISPR/Cas were analyzed in detail. In 95 out of these, more than 50% of the authors were affiliated with South American institutions. Experimental CRISPR/Cas studies target different diseases, particularly cancer, neurological, and endocrine disorders. Most patents refer to generic applications, but those with clear disease indications are for inborn errors of metabolism, ophthalmological, hematological, and immunological disorders. No clinical trials were found involving Latin American countries. Although research on gene editing in South America is advancing, our data show the low number of national innovations protected by intellectual property in this field.

Design and applications of gene therapy vectors for mucopolysaccharidosis in Colombia

The authors briefly describe their work in the construction of viral derived vectors for the use in gene therapy of muchopolysaccharide storage diseases (MPS), especially in Morquio A syndrome. The motivations to undertake that line of research about twenty years ago was the belief that gene therapy was the most plausible treatment for monogenic diseases due to the transient effect and its difficulty to reach bone tissue of the only effective treatment in use, the enzyme replacement therapy. The strategy used to increase the bone targeting was to include in the vectors an aspartic acid octapeptide that increases their affinity for the oppositely charged hydroxyapatite molecule of bone. It is also discussed the difficulties to do front line research in many developing countries, due to the extended belief that their research money should be mainly devoted to projects that render solutions in a very short time. However, the authors argue in favor of doing research in gene therapy, because it is proving to be the solution for many monogenic diseases, and therefore there is a need of people with good command of GT all over the world, in order to make good use of that therapy especially for ex-vivo treatments.