Nanoblades allow high-level genome editing in organoids

Abstract Genome engineering has become more accessible thanks to the RNA programmable endonucleases such as the CRISPR/Cas9 system. However, using this editing technology in synthetic organs called ‘organoids’ is still very inefficient. This is due to the delivery methods used for the CRISPR-Cas9 machinery, which include electroporation of CRISPR/Cas9 DNA, mRNA or ribonucleoproteins (RNPs) containing the CAS9-gRNA complex. However, these procedures are toxic to some extent for the organoids. Here we describe the use of the ‘Nanoblade’ technology, which outperformed by far knock-out (KO) levels achieved to date by gene editing in murine and human tissue derived organoids. We reached up to 80% of gene KO in organoids after treatment with nanoblades. Indeed, high-level nanoblade-mediated KO for the androgen receptor (AR) encoding gene and the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) gene was achieved with single gRNA or dual gRNA containing nanoblades in murine prostate and colon organoids. Likewise, nanoblades achieved high levels of gene editing in human organoids ranging between 20% and 50%. Most importantly, in contrast to other gene editing methods, this was obtained without toxicity for the organoids. Only four weeks are required to obtain stable gene KO in organoids and nanoblades simplify and allow rapid genome editing in organoids with little to no side-effects such as possible unwanted INDELS in off-target sites.