Establishment and validation of human cancer cell lines with stable Cas9 expression / 中华病理学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective@#To establish human cancer cell strains with stable Cas9 expression, and to validate the gene editing activity of Cas9 for simple gene editing in future study.@*Methods@#Fifteen cancer cell lines of different tissue origins were infected with pLv-EF1α-Cas9-Flag-Neo or pLv-EF1α-Cas9-Flag-Puro by lentivirus and clone selection was employed to screen Cas9 stably expressed cancer cell lines. Afterward designed guide RNA vectors targeting TSC22 gene were transiently transfected into 3 of cell lines, and subsequently the gene editing activity of Cas9 was evaluated by genomic PCR, sequencing and Western blot.@*Results@#Sixty-nine human cancer cell strains with stable Cas9 expression from different cancers were established, and by transient transfection with designed guide RNA, long fragment deletion was detected in TSC22 gene.@*Conclusions@#Sixty-nine human cancer cell strains are successfully established with stable expression of Cas9 protein and gene editing activity. These cell strains may be employed in large-scale drug screening, screening of new drug targets and gene function investigation.