<i>In vivo</i> HSC prime editing rescues Sickle Cell Disease in a mouse model
Chang Li, Aphrodite Georgakopoulou, Gregory A. Newby, Peter J. Chen, Kelcee A. Everette, Kiriaki Paschoudi, Efthymia Vlachaki, Sucheol Gil, Anna Kate Anderson, Theodore Koob, Lishan Huang, Hongjie Wang, Hans‐Peter Kiem, David R. Liu, Evangelia Yannaki, André Lieber
Abstract
Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a monogenic disease caused by a nucleotide mutation in the β-globin gene. Current gene therapy studies are mainly focused on lentiviral vector-mediated gene addition or CRISPR/Cas9-mediated fetal globin reactivation, leaving the root cause unfixed. We developed a vectorized prime editing system that can directly repair the SCD mutation in hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) in vivo in a SCD mouse model (CD46/Townes mice). Our approach involved a single intravenous injection of a nonintegrating, prime editor-expressing viral vector into mobilized CD46/Townes mice and low-dose drug selection in vivo. This procedure resulted in the correction of ∼40% of βS alleles in HSCs. On average, 43% of sickle hemoglobin was replaced by adult hemoglobin, thereby greatly mitigating the SCD phenotypes. Transplantation in secondary recipients demonstrated that long-term repopulating HSCs were edited. Highly efficient target site editing was achieved with minimal generation of insertions and deletions and no detectable off-target editing. Because of its simplicity and portability, our in vivo prime editing approach has the potential for application in resource-poor countries where SCD is prevalent.