Targeting Snail1 by CRISPR/Cas9 System Inhibits the Proliferation and Migration of Human Gastric Cancer Cells

• Peng-Wei Zhang

  Department of Cell Biology & Institute of Biomedicine, National Engineering Research Center of Genetic Medicine, MOE Key Laboratory of Tumor Molecular Biology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Bioengineering Medicine, College of Life Science and Technology, Jinan University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510632, China

• Zhe-Sheng Chen

  Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, St. John’s University, Queens, New York 11432, USA

• Zhi Shi

  Department of Cell Biology & Institute of Biomedicine, National Engineering Research Center of Genetic Medicine, MOE Key Laboratory of Tumor Molecular Biology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Bioengineering Medicine, College of Life Science and Technology, Jinan University, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510632, China

The zinc-finger transcriptional repressor Snail1 affects cancer progression by controlling the epithelial cell-mesenchymal transition. The RNA-guided clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic (CRISPR) with a CRISPR-associated nuclease 9 (Cas9) nuclease system has been extensively used for gene editing. Here, we used two distinct sgRNAs to successfully target Snail1 in the gastric cancer cell line MGC803 with the CRISPR/Cas9 system. Furthermore, we discovered that Snail1 knockout reduced the proliferation and migration of MGC803 cells.

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