Cas9-mediated knockout of Ndrg2 enhances the regenerative potential of dendritic cells for wound healing

Abstract

Chronic wounds impose a significant healthcare burden to a broad patient population. Cell-based therapies, while having shown benefits for the treatment of chronic wounds, have not yet achieved widespread adoption into clinical practice. We developed a CRISPR/Cas9 approach to precisely edit murine dendritic cells to enhance their therapeutic potential for healing chronic wounds. Using single-cell RNA sequencing of tolerogenic dendritic cells, we identified N-myc downregulated gene 2 (Ndrg2), which marks a specific population of dendritic cell progenitors, as a promising target for CRISPR knockout. Ndrg2-knockout alters the transcriptomic profile of dendritic cells and preserves an immature cell state with a strong pro-angiogenic and regenerative capacity. We then incorporated our CRISPR-based cell engineering within a therapeutic hydrogel for in vivo cell delivery and developed an effective translational approach for dendritic cell-based immunotherapy that accelerated healing of full-thickness wounds in both non-diabetic and diabetic mouse models. These findings could open the door to future clinical trials using safe gene editing in dendritic cells for treating various types of chronic wounds.

Citation

[23+HZS] Henn, D., Zhao, Sivarajav, D., Trotsyuk, A., Bonham, C.A., Fischer, K.S., Kehl, T., Fehlmann, T., Greco, A.H., Kussie, H.C., Moortgat Illouz, S.E., Padmanabhan, J., Barrera, J.A., Kneser, U., Lenhof H.-P., Januszyk, M., Levi, B., Keller, A., Longaker M.T., Chen, K., Qi, L.S., Gurtner, G.C. Cas9-mediated knockout of Ndrg2 enhances the regenerative potential of dendritic cells for wound healing. Nature Communications, 2023. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-40519-z.

 
Read Publication