The genome editing mediated by the nanoparticles leads to a dramatic decrease (>75%) in CDK11 expression, which results in further modulation of cancer cells with significant down-regulation of the proteins (MMP-9 and VEGF) involved in tumor development and metastasis as well as up-regulation of the tumor suppressor protein p53.
On the basis of the tumor cell targeting capability of biotin and AS1411 ligands as well as the nuclear targeting of AS1411, the dual-targeting system can deliver the CRISPR-Cas9 plasmid into the nuclei of tumor cells to realize highly efficient genome editing, resulting in a dramatic decrease (>90%) in CDK11 protein together with the significant downregulation of other proteins involved in tumor development, including an ∼90% decrease in MMP-9, >40% decrease in VEGF, and ∼70% decrease in survivin.
Thus, we showed that the neuroblastoma tumour suppressor critical region on 1p in our material is defined by loci D1S244 and D1S80 and that the CDC2L1 locus is distal to the critical region.